The White Horse
by KLMeri
Summary: Jim Kirk was a strange man. A silent man. No one knew much about him or, if they did, were not willing to say what they did know, especially to the town's newest magical occupant. Not that Leonard McCoy cared. He had an old curse to track down and unravel by the year's end. Meanwhile a killer was tracking him. AU.
1. Prologue

**Title**: The White Horse (1/?)  
**Author**: klmeri  
**Fandom**: Star Trek AOS  
**Characters**: Kirk, Spock, McCoy  
**Summary**: Jim Kirk was a strange man. A silent man. No one knew much about him or, if they did, were not willing to say what they did know, especially to the town's newest magical occupant. Not that Leonard McCoy cared. He had an old curse to track down and unravel by the year's end. Meanwhile a killer was tracking him. AU.  
**A/N**: Today, the muse came back with a frightening premise. I'm gonna write it anyway.

* * *

**Prologue**

_Sept 1997_

They waited until the fourth child had drowned before sending someone to fetch the mage. This displeased the federal investigator, which showed prominently in the flattening of his mouth and the flare of his nostrils. No Fed ever readily agreed to involve the Occult; they seemed naturally adverse to intermingling, like oil and water. Next to the investigator, the hard-faced man wearing the badge of the local sheriff pretended he had planned all along to bring the outsider in. In his thinking, the lie was better than an admission of defeat.

Within the hour, their last resort was picking his way through the reeds around the lake. A twenty-something deputy hovered several feet behind, looking concerned at the unsteady gait and thick mud, but somehow the old man always managed to catch himself with his crooked walking cane.

Once the mage was within earshot, he told the sheriff, "Took you long enough. I've been waiting since Tuesday."

"I don't got time for complaints" came the even response. "Four children're dead. Walked into the lake 'n drowned themselves."

The mage swiveled his head away from the crowd of people and _hmm_ed under his breath as he stared out over the water. "If you believed that, Sheriff, you wouldn't have had me brought here."

"Then who drowned 'em?"

The old man lifted a hand and traced a shape in the air. It looked like a gathering of dust-motes and faded too quickly. Then he pulled a coin from a pocket, burnished but plain-looking and not anything the others had seen before, and tossed it to the ground. For an instant the lake and its surroundings were quiet. Then the crickets and frogs resumed the chorus to their song.

"Not a who, but a what," the mage imparted, tucking a long grey sleeve back over the exposed wrist which bore the mark of his kind.

All expression vanished from the investigator's face. He flipped close a small leather-bound notepad, which he had not bothered to write in since the mage's arrival, and headed toward an unmarked sedan. The sheriff watched the agent sequester himself inside the vehicle and take out a wireless phone. No one mentioned coaxing him out again.

The sheriff gave his attention back to the old man. "No riddles this time. What do you think it is?"

"Kelpie. And I don't think, I know. Have known for a while. You should have asked me sooner."

"What's a kelpie?" queried the youngest of the crowd after exchanging a glance with a partner.

"Spirit, waterhorse," said the mage. "Someone you don't want to meet by moonlight on a lakeshore."

The sheriff crossed his arms, and his blue eyes glinted. "We combed the area. No hoof-prints."

The mage gestured at the ground with the end of his walking cane. "Why would there be any? You think I deal in things done by mortals? Your murderer is a supernatural. You'll never know it's there until it has a hold on you."

"How the hell am I supposed to stop it from killing folk, then?"

The lake reeds swayed through no discernible breeze. The mage, though he did not change expression, grew enigmatic. "I might know the answer to that. But tell me, what do I get for my trouble?"

The two men eyed each other, both well-versed in keeping their secrets tightly cocooned, until the sheriff reluctantly gave a grunt and conceded the battle. "What do you want?"

He was beckoned closer by a finger, the owner of whom cast a pointed look at the other listening ears. With a wave of his hand that wasn't to be disobeyed, the sheriff sent his deputies along toward the row of unoccupied squad cars. Some tromped their feet as they left, clearly disappointed there was to be no master trick to conjure the murderer out of thin air.

"What do you want?" he repeated once he was facing the water, alone at the side of the mage. In the middle of the lake, its surface rippled, glimmered, then grew still again. Even touched by tragedy it was still beautiful.

"It's been said those who turn a blind eye to sin are just as evil as those who commit it."

"My patience is limited, old man. What do you want? I won't ask again."

"A blind eye."

"To?"

The mage leaned forward, as if he wished to contemplate something closely. "To a crime of my own."

The sheriff took the answer in stride, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets before he spoke. "Depends. What's the crime?"

"That's an answer neither of us know, Sheriff. I haven't committed it yet." The mage gave a little nod to the side but whatever stood there, if it nodded back, was not visible to an ordinary man's eyes. "Just a precaution, you see. Can a bargain be struck between us?"

"I want this thing stopped before another body is found. There's a pattern. It happens—"

"Every third day, and only two remain. I told you, I know. But first you must give me my answer, Sheriff."

He blew out a breath. "Yes, we have a deal."

"Twice more, if you please."

The sheriff looked grim for a second but repeated his agreement two additional times. Then he demanded, "Is that all?"

"There is nothing to fear. A bargain could not exist if both sides were not beholden to their promises. I will rid you of your killer. Now we should discuss the bait to be prepared."

"What? You said nothing about bait."

The mage was amused. "Did you believe I would order it to come and die? Don't be a fool. Magic knows magic. It will never appear to me, and there is no power I hold to make it do so. A lure is required," he explained. "Younger than twelve and male. Arrange it."

"Why don't you ask for the moon, too?" the sheriff snapped, sounding jarred from his indifference for the first time. "I can't just take somebody's kid!"

"That concern is not mine."

"What if he dies?"

Briefly, the mage fell silent, perhaps to consider what he might say. "It is not my intention to let the child die. However you must also understand, if the boy sees magic, he cannot live either—not in the way he lived before."

"What does that mean?"

The old man leaned against his cane. "It is not magic-users who wish to live in secret but magic which lives secretly. It wants a price to be called forth. What form that price takes or what the magic will demand, I cannot tell you. Only know such will happen, and to the child." He studies his companion closely. "So... does this make the decision easier for you? Who will you use?"

The sheriff turned away from the edge of the lake, paler than he was at the start of the conversation. "There's, shit... There is one."

"Yes," said the mage knowingly. "His name?"

"You—you have to promise no one, _no one_ ever finds out why he was here." The man swallowed hard before asking, "Will he remember, after?"

"The name, Franklin," commanded the mage.

Franklin (called Frank by family and friends) closed his eyes. "Jimmy."

The old man nodded once, sharply. "A good choice, if a dangerous one. Your sister's child."

It took more than one try, but Frank finally trapped his expression behind its usual mask. "He won't remember." This time, there was no question in his voice.

"The memory of a child is fickle," agreed the mage, beginning to limp through the mud back the way he came. The reeds swayed. "At sunset in two days' time, leave the boy here. That will be enough."

The sheriff did not watch the mage go because he couldn't. His mind was already too occupied.

* * *

**Next Up**: Meet Leonard McCoy, who's a little bit magic and on a mission that drives him across state lines.


	2. Part One

**Part One**

When Leonard was seven, he lost all his friends. He could remember the exact moment it happened, just as he remembered in stark detail the night his mother died. He hadn't understood at the time why the other children looked at him like they were scared or why the adults would no longer meet his eyes. Even his pretty teacher, whom he admired as young boys are wont to do, seemed different as she led him off the playground. They walked to the elementary school's clinic in silence, Leonard afraid to talk because he thought he'd done something wrong and Ms. Naomi unable to talk, it seemed, because whenever she looked down at him, her chin trembled the way Leonard's did when he wanted to cry. Before she left him alone with the school nurse and a grim-faced man in a suit he knew was the vice principal, she knelt in front of him and said she was sorry. The apology frightened him more than the silence, so he asked for his parents. They were on the way, he was told.

Leonard stayed in that clinic for hours. Even when his mother came sailing in, hair as wild as it always was and eyes flashing, nobody let him leave immediately. They said, "Tell us again, Leonard. Tell us what you did to that Jenkins boy."

Leonard hadn't done anything bad, but they made it feel like he had.

Two days later, his parents told him he couldn't go to that school anymore. His mother raged about it and called everyone, including Ms. Naomi, bastards. Leonard's father didn't say anything but Leonard thought maybe, on the inside, his father was calling them bad names too.

A week after that, they took him to a building in another city that was bigger than the town library and scarier-looking too. Two nurses held him down while a man in a white coat (Leonard couldn't think of him as a doctor, _couldn't_) burned his arm. Leonard screamed. Then he had cried and promised them he would never, never, never do what he'd done again. They wrapped up their handiwork and sent him back to his parents in the lobby. He cried into his mother's shirt all the way home, and she cried into his hair.

A Mark, they called it. Because of what he was, he had to carry it the rest of his life. He wasn't allowed to cover it up, he couldn't lie about it, and if someone demanded to see it, he had to let them. For a long time, he was ashamed that he had been Marked.

Now, he was just angry. Leonard knew he'd be angry until the day he died.

* * *

_Oct 2012_

"_Hey, mister!_"

Leonard wiped the sweat off his brow, planted the head of his shovel into the ground and used it to stand on. The moment his head cleared the lip of the hole, a light shone in his eyes.

"What the fuck," snapped a voice, "aren't you done yet?"

"Get that fuckin' flashlight outta my face!" Leonard snarled back. Once he wasn't blinded, he got a good grip on the topsoil and dragged himself out of the hole. "_Goddamn_," he said, rolling onto his back. The sky above was too cloudy to get a good look at the moon. A moment later he sat up. "I guess it's deep enough."

Leonard and the young man with the flashlight peered contemplatively down into the grave.

"If this doesn't work," pointed out McCoy's companion, "we are so screwed."

Leonard scrubbed his dirty palms against his jeans. "Tell me about it." Reaching around to his back pocket out of habit, he remembered he'd left his cigarettes in the truck. "What time is it?"

"Half past."

That much closer to midnight. "Let's get this done."

He went for his backpack left by a big limb that had fallen from the ancient oak reaching out over the fence. There, the whiff of rot was strong enough it overpowered the familiarity of freshly turned earth. Leonard wrinkled his nose and opened the backpack. As he dug through it, something cold crawled along his spine.

A warning, he figured, or just a curious touch from the dryad dreaming inside the tree. He didn't really know; and, in order to get paid for this night's work, he didn't have the time to care.

"What happens if we don't finish by midnight?" asked the flashlight-bearer, beginning to shift nervously on his feet now that they were on track to perform the ritual.

"Tomorrow's All Hallows' Eve. What do you think will happen?"

"Fuck if I know! Like... like zombies'll rise outta the ground or some shit?"

Leonard snorted and finally found what he was looking for. He sat back on his haunches and with his thumb flicked his lighter to life. Over the tiny orange flame, he observed the pale face watching him so intently. "This ain't a horror movie. Now go stand to the side but make sure you shine the light where I can see what the fuck I'm doin'."

"Don't you need my help?"

"What I need is for you to stay out of the way." People who'd never seen this sort of thing before tended to get spooked, which in turn tended to make them too stupid to live, like tripping headfirst into an open grave during an incantation. Leonard had no tolerance for fools unless it was to make ends meet.

Wordlessly, the young man held the flashlight aloft for Leonard.

Leonard took a bundle of cloth from his backpack and unrolled it at the edge of the grave.

"_Fuck_."

"Shut up," Leonard said mildly as he lifted free a skull missing its jawbone. "Ugly fucker," he muttered under his breath then tossed it into the hole. He threw in a couple of ribs and a femur after it.

"The spell is gonna to do what it's supposed to, right?"

"I told you to shut up!" snapped Leonard. "This is curse work. If I can't concentrate, I might turn the curse on _you_."

Blessed silence. Leonard pinched the bridge of his nose once and went back to work. In the end, he got through the whole thing under twenty minutes and thought it still looked pretty authentic. But his client just stared at him after it was over, underwhelmed by the lack of the supernatural phenomena. Leonard had warned him the first time they'd met he wasn't a one-man magic sideshow. He guessed now the idiot believed him.

Leonard met that stare with an even one of his own until he was grudgingly handed the second half of his payment.

"How will I know if it really worked?" The people who hired Leonard always, _always_ asked that question afterwards. This one was no exception.

Leonard finished counting the cash before he tossed his shovel at the young man's feet. "You won't until you cover that hole up. I'd get it done 'fore the sun comes up, otherwise somebody's gonna nail your ass for ripping up private property."

The guy blinked at him stupidly. Leonard closed up his backpack and started to walk away.

_Five, four, three, two—_

"Where the fuck are you going!" came the uncertain cry at McCoy's back. A bird sleeping high up in the branches of the oak tree startled and flapped its wings.

Leonard's mouth quirked at one end. He never slowed his pace. The first thing he did when he reached his truck was tuck a cigarette between his lips in celebration. By dawn, he'd be three counties gone and if the idiot ever figured out the spell had been a scam... well, Leonard wasn't likely to be back this way any time soon.

He took a long drag on the cigarette before stubbing it out in a paper cup filled with other partially smoked cigarette butts. He made the same promise to himself he always did after: that he'd quit before he was home again. For some reason, that promise never held water more than a few days.

At the nearest station Leonard ditched his prepaid phone, bought a tank of gas, and a few bottles of water. After that, he simply drove. An hour became two, nearly three. The roads were almost empty of traffic. He skirted Augusta by an old route (he loved the Savannah by moonlight; it was a beautiful thing) and was heading southwest into Georgia state in no time, feeling a little nostalgic as he always did when passing through.

Then the call came, cutting abruptly into the silence of the cab with an enthusiastic cry from Winnie the Pooh's Tigger, a ringtone Leonard had eventually gotten himself used to. He pulled over to the shoulder of the road and searched for his personal cell phone in the mess of fast food wrappers littering the floorboard. Since it was still dark in Mississippi, there was only one person who could be calling him.

Leonard found the phone on the fourth ring. He answered it with "Dad?"

"Where are you?"

The way his father sounded immediately caused Leonard's heart to lodge itself in his throat. "Georgia. Joanna?"

"Asleep. Mazie's watchin' her. Len..." His father's voice had grown very soft, as it always did when delivering bad news.

Leonard closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the seat, remembering the cold that had touched his spine earlier, which he'd dismissed. Not a warning, then.

Somehow he managed to find the words for what his heart already knew. They came out close to a whisper. "Gramps is gone."

His father was quiet for a long time. Leonard was grateful for that.

At last, he dragged in a breath just for the noise it made. "I can be home by lunch. Don't—don't tell Jo yet. I'll do it." He paused. "Will you be okay?"

"Drive careful" was the only thing his father said and hung up.

Leonard dropped the cell phone into the seat beside him. Unfolding the envelope of cash from his jacket pocket, he considered what he had left. It'd be enough for gas for the truck and coffee for himself. Maybe for a dress for Jo to wear to the funeral. He'd planned to make more so he could have more to give but life, he knew, didn't always see fit to follow along with best-laid plans.

_Ah, Gramps_, Leonard thought, heart heavy. He shifted the old pickup into drive and pulled back onto the highway. Focusing on distant city lights helped him ignore the way his hands shook on the wheel. It was harder to ignore the roiling of his stomach.

His grandfather had believed it was tragedy that defined people's lives, which shaped them into who they were meant to be. He'd said so after Leonard's mother died, after the arrest when he was fifteen, and after the coldly polite letter that tore Leonard's hope in half: _"Boy, it's the righteous man who comes out of the fire stronger than he was._"

Leonard hated hearing that. It left him with a bad feeling he couldn't shake, and it always made him wonder what kind of fire would try to burn him next.

At that thought, his wrist ached from a long-ago pain. As Leonard often did, he traced the raised skin there with an absent mind. Oddly enough, it kept his grief at bay.

He was in Mississippi by noon.

* * *

"Daddy!"

The little girl flying down the front porch steps was taller than his knees. She had had a growth spurt in his absence. Leonard scooped his daughter up anyway and let her cling to his neck, rumbling, "Hey there, darlin'."

"You're back!" Everything about her was exuberant.

Leonard's right hand clutched at the back of her overalls, and for a moment he battled with himself about letting her go. In the end, his own body won out.

He set her down on her feet with a dramatic groan. "My god, girl, you're too heavy! What has Grandpa been feeding you?"

Joanna grinned up at him. "He says you ate more at my age. He says you were fat!"

The screen door squealed on its hinges. Leonard looked up to see his father move toward the top step of the porch and protested loudly, "I was not! I was pleasantly rotund."

"Fat like a little piglet," countered his father. "Amelia had a time finding you clothes that fit right." He paused and leaned against the porch post, gaze landing on the back of Joanna's head. "Your father grew out of it, though. By the time he hit grade school he was as skinny as every other boy who thought running was better than walking somewhere."

At the mention of school, Leonard swallowed down bitterness. He hadn't stayed in grade school long, that was for certain. A sharpness in his old man's eyes indicated he knew what Leonard was thinking.

Leonard smiled at his daughter, asking like any good father, "Are you minding your teachers, Jo?"

She gave a firm nod. "Yes, sir. I'm the smartest in my class too! That's what Ms. Thompson thinks."

He tweaked one of her pigtails and turned her towards the house. "What makes you believe that?"

"Well, why wouldn't she?"

"True," he conceded then laughed, amused at the way she puffed up with pride at his agreement.

Leonard hesitated on the porch even as Joanna skipped into the house.

"Joanna, go get your father a glass of tea. He looks beat to the bone," ordered her grandfather.

The little girl ran for the kitchen with a shout of "Okay!"

Leonard looked at him once Joanna had vanished from sight. "You all right?"

His father nodded, kept his voice low so their conversation wouldn't carry. "I am. You know he wouldn't have gone if it wasn't time. Your Grandmother McCoy always said the men of the family are three kinds of stubborn like that."

They made for a set of rocking chairs. Leonard's father sat down. Leonard knew if he took a seat too, in the next moment he'd fall asleep. The better option was leaning against the porch railing. Leonard crossed his arms.

"I got the call from the home late last night."

"About eleven-thirty," Leonard guessed.

His father studied him for a moment before agreeing. They didn't talk about how Leonard had known. "Passed in his sleep. He... looked at peace, when I saw 'im."

Willing his tears to stay in his eyes, Leonard fixed his gaze on the boards of the house. The siding needed to be re-painted. He'd do it before he left again.

"Have you talked to anybody yet?"

"No, except to call Whittaker's about an appointment. They took care of your grandmother, too."

Leonard hadn't known that, nor had he known his paternal grandmother. She had died before he was born. "I'll go with you, or I can take care of the arrangements myself if you aren't up to it."

"Leonard..."

"I know," he said. "We don't have the money."

"Cremation's cheaper."

Leonard shook his head. "That plot next to Grandmother is his. You know that's what he wanted. He wouldn't have bought it otherwise."

"There's still the casket and the obituary. The viewing, the church service. Maybe the reception after. Even a fee to dig the hole."

Leonard had a brief image of what he'd been doing last night. He tucked that thought away guiltily. "We can have it graveside. If people want to come over after, they'll come here anyway." He glanced down the road. "I'm surprised no one's been here to see you yet."

"Neighbors already brought food. I told 'em Joanna didn't know yet, so they agreed to come back later."

_Speak of the devil_, Leonard thought as Joanna came out of the house. A quick glance at his father, and they were in mutual agreement to discuss the details of the funeral later. Leonard thanked his daughter for his drink. His first sip left him surprised. "Huh, this is different. Good."

"I put mint in it," Joanna told him.

Leonard's father stared down at his own glass of tea with a nonplussed expression. "The girl likes to experiment." The man might have muttered something about how things were just fine the way they'd always been.

There was a story there, Leonard could tell. He draped his arm over Joanna's shoulders and hugged her close to him. "So what else can you make?" he asked her.

The child lit up and proceeded to tell him. He let her talk, wanting to savor this moment of happiness. She'd cry once he told her about her great-grandfather.

And then she'd ask him why he couldn't fix it, because he was her father, he was special, and he fixed her whenever she needed it. He'd help anybody who asked, even if they feared him as soon as that help was given.

So Leonard let her talk to her heart's content until a car came up the long dirt road. Then he gently steered her into the house to explain about death, and left his father to greet the visitors bearing food and condolences.

* * *

The funeral was a short affair that happened two days later. Leonard wore the suit he'd bought for Joanna's mother's funeral but hadn't had the chance to wear because in the end Jocelyn's family hadn't wanted him there. It was snug in some places and loose in others. He supposed he'd changed enough over the years for that to be so.

Joanna held his hand the entire time. She had wanted to be nearest the unadorned pine casket as the preacher prayed, not understanding why her father had an aversion to being in plain sight of all the mourners. Not that it mattered. Eyes followed him wherever he went.

When the decision had been made to leave Georgia, Leonard's grandfather had welcomed his son and grandson with open arms and scorned the gossip that came with them. His Gramps had loved him and made it publicly known on more than one occasion he would never turn his back on family. That was the kind of man he had been.

Caught up in those memories, Leonard's eyes burned the entire day, but he didn't once cry. Joanna didn't cry either. He loved her even more for her strength.

Funny how, he sometimes thought, that for all that his family had stood with him over the years and never abandoned him, it was this small child who gave him a reason to be better than his worst. He couldn't imagine himself being strong without her. It made no difference that, because of what he was, he could claim no paternal rights. They were father and daughter. Leonard knew he would fight the world if he had to in order to protect her.

When the time came, that love was what drove him to Iowa to find the curse-maker responsible for killing her.


	3. Part Two

**Part Two**

_June 2013_

While Leonard watched his daughter sleep, he felt like his world was ending. He reached for her hand for comfort, but the man occupying the corner of the room shifted in warning so instead Leonard pretended to straighten the blanket over the bed as if that had been his intention all along. The fact that he couldn't do something as simple as have physical contact with her made his gut burn with anger. But if he wanted to keep his visitor's pass, he had to abide by the rules.

Doctors in general were wary whenever one of Leonard's kind encroached on their territory. Him in particular they didn't just feel wariness over; that was what the unrelenting stare of the security guard meant. If Leonard tried his particular brand of magic on his daughter, he would be dragged out. Likely then, as soon as he hit pavement, the police would come to arrest him. That's the way the system worked.

Only to Leonard, it made no sense. In a hospital of the sick and dying, he couldn't help. If his particular gift was something other than what it was, he might have had some understanding for the way things were. It didn't make sense to have a magic-user—a mage—working a spell over a patient's bed unless the ailment itself was magical. That sort of thing, in an atmosphere reeking of desperation, caused panic, created chaos. The medical staff couldn't concentrate on fighting for their patients if they were too busy fighting magic which ran rampant and did more harm than good.

But Leonard's ability worked only on the non-magical; its purpose was to heal the wrongness in the body. He had learned that much from in his research nearly a decade ago. He had known it instinctively for far longer.

Why then couldn't he help Joanna? At the very least, lessen her pain?

The answer was simple: the Marked broke the natural laws. They held power in a way ordinary men did not, and that made them a threat to be contained. They couldn't be given too much or treated too kindly for fear of the advantages they already had.

The world's view was all a great big fucking joke—and Leonard hated it. The only thing he hated more was himself.

He shoved a hand through his unkempt hair and closed his eyes, listening to the steady beat of Joanna's heart monitor. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept more than a few hours in a row. Sleep seemed unimportant. Most things did, except this awful guilt he carried.

How could he have been so stupid? So arrogant? So complacent?

He had been treating the symptoms, the doctors told him, but not the cause. Every time he thought he was curing the flu, or settling an upset stomach, or healing her skin because she bruised so easily—he was putting a band-aid on a bigger problem and turning a blind eye to the truth. He should have taken her to a certified practitioner.

And now, for Joanna, it was too late.

The chemotherapy wasn't working the way they hoped it would. She might have had a better chance a year ago. If the lead time had been two years, maybe, they could have positively affected the bone marrow's white blood cell production. Now it came down to a transplant. Leonard wasn't a match. His father wasn't, either, or both of Jocelyn's parents or her sister whom Leonard had spent two weeks begging to take a blood test. A sibling would be was the best chance Joanna had for a donor but she had none, and Jocelyn was dead.

It felt as if everything had turned against them. One moment he had a happy child proudly showing him her artwork from school, the next moment she was telling him not to worry from a hospital bed, despite the pallor of her face, sunken eyes and thin limbs. Between the two of them, Joanna was still the stronger one. He saw it in the way she carefully hid her fear, how she didn't cry after losing her hair and accepted her visitors with a good nature. Leonard himself was slowly breaking into pieces, and he didn't know if he could be put back together again.

It was not just the fear of losing his daughter destroying him but the guilt and the fact everyone knew he was guilty. The doctor who gave the prognosis had had no sympathy for Leonard. The look in the man's eyes had accused Leonard of his crime, saying, _Your little girl's gonna die because you thought you knew better than us._

And he was right: Leonard didn't know anything. He didn't know a damn thing, because he'd told the agent who had come recruiting him for some classified government program in his early twenties to fuck off, because he'd hated that Joanna had to live with the stigma of having him for a father and shielded her as best he could, because he'd wanted to shun the world for shunning him. He couldn't blame his actions—or lack thereof—on being too poor to afford healthcare. That blame belonged ultimately to his bad judgment.

_Too late_.

Leonard launched himself out of the chair and into a small private bathroom in time to throw up the coffee he had for breakfast. Bile scalded the back of his throat, and sweat ran down his face. Eventually, after several long minutes of dry heaving, his stomach quit cramping enough that he could stand up. He washed the taste of vomit out of his mouth. The guard was a shadow in the doorway, but Leonard doubted the man cared that he was sick, only that he didn't start drawing runes all over the bathroom mirror.

Leonard pushed past the asshole and wobbled back to the chair he'd abandoned. He slumped into it and leaned forward to rest his head on the edge of Joanna's bed.

"Sit up," the guard ordered.

Leonard drew in his shoulders but he sat up, wiping at his watery eyes with the back of his hand. His voice cracked when he said, "Don't watch me."

But the guard did. Leonard cried anyway.

* * *

In a matter of months, David McCoy Jr. had aged well past sixty. Mazie Lane, the woman he'd paid to keep his house for going on nearly two decades, feared for him. She feared for his boy, too. Neither man would recover if the girl child was lost.

The hospital doctor said it was leukemia. Mazie couldn't believe it. It wasn't that she had no faith in medical science; it was that she knew too much about the McCoy family. Magic, especially bad magic, had a way of disguising itself.

She tried to talk to David about it, but even broken-hearted he was too stubborn to listen.

"It's cancer, Mazie. Some things in this world are crueler than any spell." He sagged in the kitchen chair while she stood by the stove, looking close to tears. "There's nothin' to be done."

That made her angry. She twisted the dishtowel in her hands. "Is that the way you felt about your wife?"

David's head came up. "Don't you bring her into this."

"Why not?" the woman countered. "You know it was the curse, same as—"

"NO!" David's hands came down on the kitchen table like a thunderclap.

Mazie jumped a little in response, but after a moment lifted her chin in defiance. "Your father believed."

"My father needed a reason to excuse his mistakes. If he'd listened to my mother, she wouldn't have gone after him and she wouldn't have died."

"Fine, you can blame your daddy all you want," Mazie told him, "but that don't change facts. Your mama was cursed for a short life the day she wed into the McCoy family." She put her back to him, saying as if it was the end of the discussion, "I guess you got a point after all. Nothing can be done to stop a curse so black."

A tense silence hung between them. She re-arranged the bacon strips in the frying pan while she waited for David to find his voice again. Eventually he did.

"I've never stopped being afraid. That's the curse my father passed down to me on the day I was old enough to understand our family history. When I held my son for the first time, I promised myself I'd never give that burden to him. Can't you understand?"

"Yes," she said, "but, David... haven't you wondered why Leonard's different than the rest of us? Maybe he's the magic God gave you to fight back with."

"I wouldn't say that outside this house, Mazie. Other people call that heresy."

"Other people can keep themselves ignorant of the way the world is if it makes 'em feel safer. I know better, and so do you. You gotta tell him."

"I can't."

"The choice ain't yours anymore," Mazie stated, words firm but tone gentle. "This is about his baby. He'd never forgive you if you didn't give him the option, 'n you'd never forgive yourself if she died without every chance you could give her to live." She took the skillet off the stove. "Food's ready. Grab yourself a plate and eat something."

"I was heading to the hospital. Len's been there three days in a row. He needs a break."

Mazie felt she could concede a little now that she had said what was on her mind. "It won't hurt you to have a small bite while you get ready. I can wrap up the rest for y'all to have once you're there."

"Bless you, I'll do that." David stood up from the table and went for the bread box. Though he moved with tiredness in his bones, the set of his shoulders seemed less defeated.

Mazie breathed a sigh of relief. She knew in her heart there was a way to save little Joanna, just as she knew Leonard McCoy wouldn't give up until he found that way. Maybe in the process he could save his family who had yet to be born from heartache, too.

* * *

Joanna was still asleep. The treatments wore her down more quickly these days. Leonard had been dozing by her bedside when his father arrived with a paper bag in one hand and a small book in the other. He rubbed at his eyes as he sat up and said, "Hey."

Leonard's father lifted the paper bag. "Here, Mazie made breakfast."

"I had something."

Tugging the rolling tray away from the wall, his father put the food on it and pushed it towards Leonard's chair. He scolded Leonard mildly, "Don't lie to your father, boy. You can't live on coffee. Have some breakfast."

It did smell good, and Leonard's stomach seemed to like the idea even though it had rejected the coffee earlier on. He un-wrapped an egg and bacon sandwich. It was still slightly warm. "Thanks," he murmured after taking a large bite.

His father sank into a chair opposite him and watched him eat. Wordlessly, Leonard set the second sandwich in front of the man. His father picked it up and slowly peeled back its foil.

"There's somethin' I want to talk to you about, Len," he said to his son, "but not here."

Leonard paused mid-chew. "Okay?"

David McCoy sighed and lowered the uneaten sandwich in his hand. He set the small book he'd brought on the tray between them. The stained cover bore no title or author. Leonard could smell its age. He picked it up.

"Is this leather?" he asked, turning it over. A page slipped out and drifted to the tabletop. Leonard stared at the unfamiliar handwriting and inkblots.

"It's your great-grandfather's journal. He wrote it as a boy. You'll want to read it after..." His father glanced in the direction of the granite-faced guard. "...we talk."

Leonard understood. He set the journal down and finished his sandwich. In silence, his father did the same. Then they asked a nurse to check in on Jo, and left the children's ward. The guard followed them as far as the parking garage. Leonard shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and asked his father, "Where to?"

David pointed toward the small park across the street maintained by the hospital. They took the footbridge from the parking garage to get there. Leonard had a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach as soon as he stepped onto the grass. He grabbed his father's arm to delay their trek toward a pair of benches under a half-grown cypress.

"Dad, what's this about?"

"We should sit down first."

"No."

His father looked at him strangely. "Why?"

Leonard's gaze roamed the park. "I don't know." He blew out a breath before amending, "I'm tired of sitting." Then he looked at his father. "And if it's bad news, I'd rather take it standing up." With that declaration came the fleeting memory of when he had first heard the word 'cancer' in conjunction with his daughter's name and how the world had fuzzed out to grey. He had wound up on his knees, just trying to breathe.

"It's not... bad or good, Len. It's just what it is. It's whatever you decide to do with it."

That settled Leonard for some reason. He nodded for his father to continue.

The man studied him. "What do you feel about this place?"

The question was unexpected. Leonard took a moment to consider it. "You would think there's a kind of calm here, with the way it looks, but there isn't," he answered. "It's steeped in sadness, like people come here to make peace with what they're going through and can't."

"There is no peace to be made with loss."

"No," Leonard agreed, swallowing hard. "Why did you ask me that question?"

"Because it's not something I'm capable of answerin'. Only you can."

He knew his father wasn't trying to be unkind. Nonetheless, he said, "You don't have to remind me."

A hand settled on Leonard's shoulder, squeezed it gently. "Son, I know I haven't said the words outright, but I've never been afraid of what you are—and I've never regretted it."

Leonard struggled to contain the emotion building inside him. "How can you say that?" he almost demanded. "The way we've had to live, the way Mom died, Joanna—" His voice caught.

But the other man just shook his head. "None of those things are your fault. You can't control the actions of others any more than you can control God's will."

The pain that struck Leonard, and the disbelief, stole his breath. "God's will? Are you—you can't—it _isn't_ God's will for my daughter to die!"

"I wasn't talking about Joanna," his father countered sharply. "I meant you."

"Fuck God, then!" Leonard spat. "If there is a fuckin' God, he should have had the mercy to make me like everybody else."

For the first time in months, David McCoy looked frustrated with his son. "Leonard."

That tone of voice meant _stop it_ but Leonard didn't want to stop. "Did I ask to be this way, Dad? Did I ask to be treated like shit—_fuck_, like I'm not even a human being?"

His father grabbed him by both shoulders.

"I can't get a job, I can't raise my own kid—" Angry tears filled his eyes. "—I can't even hold her hand when she's dyin'. So don't tell me God did me a service!" He would have said more, but in the next second he was in the circle of his father's arms and he couldn't speak.

"I know," his father said, "I know it hurts. Oh, my boy, I know, but you've got to hear me out. Forget God for a moment. I think, no, I _believe_ you have a gift. That's why I never told you to hide it or forbade you from using it. You heal people, Len. I can't think of a better use of magic than that. You're the very reason I can't accept it as evil—not because you're my son but because you can do something with it that is good."

Leonard choked out, "Then why can't I heal her? Why?"

"Maybe you could... maybe you're being prevented from it by something more powerful, more determined than you are."

Leonard tried to pull back to see his father's face but the man wouldn't let him go. "Dad, what're you saying?"

"Hush a second, son, 'n let me talk. There's a story—no, a _truth_ I have to tell you. It's all in that journal, too, when you're up to reading it. I always wanted it to be a fantasy, just some fairytale made up by a child, but now I have to hope it's not. For Joanna's sake."

Leonard quieted and listened.

And his father told him everything.

* * *

Afterward, Leonard asked for time alone to think, and his father returned to Joanna's bedside without him. The early morning air began to warm up as Leonard restlessly circled the small park. He smoked through three cigarettes and hid the butts in a napkin in his pocket. Eventually, he had turned the story over in his head enough times that he began to believe it.

Had Jocelyn's death been part of the curse on his family? She'd suffered an aneurysm during childbirth. Everyone had been shocked that such a young healthy woman had died so suddenly when there were no signs of complications. Her parents had wanted to blame Leonard somehow, to blame the baby too because it was Leonard's, but there had been no proof. Leonard had wanted Jocelyn to live like everyone else, even if he hadn't been in love with her. She had promised to raise their daughter and, law be damned, let him help her do it.

He just couldn't imagine that a curse would have struck her down like that. It would be like striking a stranger. There were rules magic had to follow regardless of how wily it was. That was why the wording which brought a spell to fruition mattered so much.

At least, he knew that in theory. Leonard didn't practice spells himself because he didn't see the point. His ability didn't need words. He guessed that meant he would have to find someone who did if he wanted to understand the spell his father remarked was in the journal.

That spell, that curse...

Joanna was the most important girl in his life, the person to whom he'd given his heart. Before her, he had never had plans to give it to anyone. He'd briefly considered it with Jocelyn, because he was lonely, but decided affection was all he could manage.

If the person who had enacted revenge on the McCoy's so long ago wanted every man in the family to suffer the loss of love, it made sense that Joanna was a target. Curses didn't know or care about age, or relationship, unless it had been specified. This one would work based on emotion.

Undoing the curse might be futile, Leonard thought, but at least it was a purpose, a goal. Otherwise, he could only wait and pray, and he was useless at both.

Leonard went to the nearest tree, closed his eyes, and put his bare palm against it. _What do I do?_ he asked.

Tree spirits were by and large simple, often reticent. Their world had been gridded, measured, planned, and the earth so buried nothing could bloom in secret. Still, he hoped for an answer because Mother Nature always seemed wiser than people.

Sadness whispered back to him, making his palm tingle against the bark. Leonard withdrew his hand, disappointed. Of course no guidance could be given to him, not unless he had something to give in return.

But as he walked away, he realized if Joanna died, he and the spirits in this park would have an overwhelming sadness in common. Maybe that was reason enough to go on a fool's errand.

* * *

With the usual shadow tailing him, Leonard sought out Joanna's doctor. The man was in his office, he was told, so that's where he tried to go. The corridor he was on took a turn away from the elevators to cross a designated waiting area and lose itself at the end of a walkway that bridged two buildings. Leonard stopped there and admitted he had no idea where he was. "If you're going to follow me," he told his shadow, "the least you could do is be useful."

The guard gave him a begrudging look before taking the lead. They arrived at their destination without mishap. Luckily Leonard didn't have to fight with an assistant for an appointment to see Joanna's doctor because the man, about Leonard's age, was standing outside his office talking to someone.

Leonard went straight to him and interrupted the conversation. "I gotta speak to you."

"I'll be down to check on Joanna this afternoon, Mr. McCoy. You can talk to me then."

"How long does she have?" he asked. "I know you told me before, but things seem worse."

The man seemed to realize Leonard wasn't going to go away. He dismissed his companion. "You're a very rude person, McCoy."

"I give what I get," replied Leonard flatly. "How long?"

"Without the bone marrow transplant, a few more months; a little longer if the next round of radiation treatments can slow the spread of the cancer. But in all likelihood, she'll be gone before the new year."

The asshole didn't sound sorry about it. Leonard could have punched him, but instead he turned away, saying, "I want you to know two things, Clay: first, the fact that you feel nothing about one of your patients dying tells me what kind of man you are, and, second, if you think you're better than me, you sure as hell haven't proved it." Something inside Leonard settled as he spoke. "I'm not going to let my girl leave this world so easily. Because of that, I might be gone for a while, so I don't have a choice but to trust you to look out for her. You do that, Clay. You'd better."

"I told you to call me Dr. Treadway," the other man snapped. Then his eyes narrowed. "I didn't think you were willing to leave her. Why? What're you planning?"

Leonard didn't rise to the bait. "That's none of your business. Just do your damn job. If not for my sake, then for Jocelyn's. She would have wanted her child to live."

Clay's nostrils flared and the lines about his mouth became strained. "Fuck you."

With a nasty smile, Leonard retorted back, "Fuck you too." When he walked away, it was with the sense he had achieved what he wanted. Clay would fight to keep Joanna alive until Leonard returned just to spite him—and to give Leonard more time to dig himself a little deeper into his own grave. Such was the power of hatred. In that, at least, they understood each other completely.

Now he only had to accomplish the hard part: telling his daughter he would be gone without explaining why. He would promise he would be back just as soon as he could and have to hope someday she forgave him.

But even if she didn't, saving her would be worth whatever price he ended up paying.


	4. Part Three

**Part Three**

_July 2013_

With the practice of magic outlawed on the streets, there weren't a lot of places for Leonard to go if he wanted something more dangerous than a parlor trick. For near a month, he made his way from one side of the Mississippi to the other hunting for the right kind of magic. Some Marked shut their doors in his face when they heard his request; others gave him a sly smile and a crook of a finger. By the third time he'd been led down a false path, he was lit with an anger that burned him from the inside out. He gave that bastard a permanently crooked nose and a left hand that would heal too slow and always ache.

Afterwards Leonard walked the city, slum to slum, feeling sick and hopeless and too aware of the shadow that had followed him from the conman's house. He warned the fool to leave him the fuck alone.

But at the next turn of an alley, the shadow slid closer, its eyes veiled, and stepped into Leonard's path. "He was wrong to trick you." It held out a hand fisted around a wad of cash.

Leonard pocketed what he had been cheated out of without counting it. He doubted it was all there but nothing could be done about that now. "You should have warned me."

The shadow, shorter and smaller than Leonard, met his gaze without fear. "I wanted to eat next month—but now I know it was wrong to trick you."

"Because I'm like you."

"Yeah."

Leonard muttered a quiet _fuck_ under his breath and dug out a cigarette. When the shadow looked hopeful, he said, "You can't have one. You're too young."

He got a very sour "Fuck you" in return.

Leonard grunted, mildly amused, and took a long drag. He blew the smoke to the side and, a moment later, pulled the money back out of his pocket. He shoved half of it into the shadow's grimy hands, turned away, and started walking again. He didn't want thanks and he didn't expect any. Some decisions were best made in one second and forgotten in the next.

It surprised him when the kid came after him and said in a rush, holding tightly onto Leonard's forearm, "There's somebody who can do it. He... found me, once, when nobody else could. My parents paid him a lot of money to get me back."

Leonard considered whether or not that might be the truth. "Then why aren't you still with your parents?"

A laugh, there and gone. "Would you believe me if I said street life was easier?"

Leonard didn't answer that, couldn't because he _did_ believe the kid. If his own parents had been different, loved him less, he might have given up on them too.

The kid let go of his arm, muttered a name; then, before Leonard could express gratitude, he became a shadow again, just a shapeless figure in the dark that slowly ebbed away.

Leonard took the cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it beneath the heel of his shoe. It tasted too bitter for him to still enjoy it.

One more try, he promised himself, standing alone in the alleyway. One more. Joanna was counting on him.

* * *

The name was well-known in certain circles. Leonard learned plenty because now he knew the right questions to ask. With the knowledge, though, came warnings. People believed in what the mage could do but no one trusted him—and they gave Leonard more than one good reason why.

In the end, armed with a location, a number and a deep uncertainty, he still had to try. He drove for two days straight, and when he was close enough, he stopped at a payphone and made a call. Someone picked up on the second ring.

All sense and sanity fled. Leonard blurted out, "I need your help." Then he held his breath, because that had been entirely the wrong thing to say between strangers.

But an answer came a second later, eerily calm: "Tell me."

With a trembling in his hands, Leonard did.

* * *

A set of directions took Leonard out of the city limits and down a private, paved lane. Once parked in front of the property, he thought he might have stepped into another world and rubbed his palms against the rough fabric of his jeans to remind him of what was real. Gathering his courage, he left the safety of his truck.

A gateway, which Leonard went through cautiously, led to an inner yard, a square court with trees standing leafless. Odd that, he noted, as if in this place the sweltering heat of mid-summer was not allowed past the tall iron-wrought fence. He felt a chill and shivered.

A man opened the double doors at the opposite end and stepped down from a small terrace. His hair was vivid black against the pale stonework of the house. "You are Mr. McCoy," he stated. "I welcome you to my home."

Leonard tried not to show his surprise, released the breath he wanted to hold. The guy seemed neither young nor old, and power clung to him like tendrils of a vine. Though Leonard could not physically see where the power was emanating from, out of the corner of his eye he imagined it breaking through the roots of the trees, from a well deep in the earth, and spilling into the courtyard to find a willing receptacle. Earth magic was relatively familiar to Leonard, but the kind here felt foreign and he did not want that power to touch him.

"Take the side path," the man said. "It will guard you."

Leonard swallowed and nodded. Now that he was looking down, he could see the patterns inlaid along the ground. From the perspective of an outsider, it might be the artistic flare of a landscaping design. Leonard saw something else. He chose a white streak of granite that curved along the border of a flower bed. It carried him safely to the edge of the terrace.

His voice held his relief. "When we talked on the phone yesterday, Mr. Sarek, I got the impression you weren't going to help me."

"Sarek only."

"Sarek," Leonard repeated, then added sincerely, "So thanks—thank you for seeing me."

"You have traveled a great distance, Mr. McCoy. It would be unkind to turn you away. Please, be welcome. Come inside."

Sarek placed his hands behind his back and led the way. Leonard was far too desperate to do anything but follow.

The inside of the house was as intimidating as the outside. It was spacious, sparsely but expensively decorated, and austere, although not in an unfriendly way. Leonard did not get the sense that many people lived with Sarek. The air was too hushed, too still like it wasn't used to being disturbed.

His attention became captivated by the adornments on a far wall.

"Ah, the fauchard," Sarek remarked, noticing the direction of his guest's gaze. "It was favored by medieval Europeans between the eleventh and fourteen century. Unfortunately its design did not make it as effective as they wished it to be."

For being so old, the blade gleamed like it had been recently polished. "Looks like a scythe to me."

"Yes, but it was never a tool for farming."

Leonard figured he shouldn't know more than that and reined in his curiosity. The two men crossed the broad room to a hallway that was long enough to run the length of the house. They passed several closed doors until Sarek halted before a door of mahogany. He skimmed his fingers across its surface then turned the knob. A spell unraveled and dissipated.

The room had no windows. The air inside smelled of pitch. Light from a series of wall sconces revealed a massive hearth, a charred ring in the center of the floor, and shelves upon shelves of books, some with metal locks on them.

Leonard's heart thudded in his chest. He didn't go farther than the doorway. "Do you normally invite strangers into your practice room, or am I special?"

The only thing he had in his back pocket was a lighter. It was the height of stupidity, he realized belatedly, to enter the home of another Marked without a way to defend himself. Leonard had just assumed he would be able to walk back out again, unmolested. What a fucking idiot!

And there was no doubt this guy had _real power_.

Sarek studied him with one eyebrow lifted. "Do you believe I intend you harm?"

"You could," Leonard replied, then tried for menacing. "Or maybe I'm the one who might hurt you. Ever thought about that?"

Sarek didn't even blink. "We are unknown to one another. This is a fact. However, if your intentions were at all malicious, Mr. McCoy, you would have not made it past the wards on the gate."

"Oh," muttered Leonard, feeling stupider. "Oh, right."

Of course Sarek knew he didn't have anything to fear from Leonard—but Leonard still had a feeling he ought to fear Sarek.

Then he remembered Joanna, and his fear became irrelevant.

"I brought what I could find," he said, drawing a small pouch out of his jacket. He walked to a large round table, set the pouch down and pulled off the string that held it together. The cloth fell open to reveal its contents. "There's not much left, you understand, of those days except an old book or two. The curse was cast during my great-grandfather's time."

Sarek stepped up to the table and lightly touched a lock of dark, brittle hair.

Leonard jammed his hands into his jean pockets. "It was my mother's." Next to it was another curl of hair, the color of gold whose sheen had grown dull. "My daughter's, from a couple of years ago. I thought... well, I thought it might help to have the connection."

"If they are in fact victims of a curse, these articles will be useful in tracking the maker."

"Joanna's not a victim," Leonard said tightly. An admission of _not yet_ lingered unspoken.

Sarek picked up the small leather-bound journal. "May I?"

Leonard shrugged then turned away as Sarek opened the journal up to the place where a page had been creased. While Sarek read the entry that served as a vague origin story of the curse, Leonard went to the nearest bookshelf and half-heartedly browsed the collection. Some of the books looked new, but most of them were thick and old and title-less. He didn't dare touch any of them.

Inevitably the silence became too much. He circled back to Sarek and almost demanded, "Can you do it?"

Sarek was staring off into space, Leonard's great-grandfather's journal cradled loosely in his hands.

"_Hey_," Leonard snapped, beginning to feel sick with his desperation again, "don't bullshit me on this! Some quack in Memphis said you got some kind of fuckin' immunity from the Feds, so you have to be damned good."

It galled Leonard that his best chance to find the truth came from a man who played lapdog for a government that wanted his kind to live in fear. It couldn't matter, though, because any help was better than none, better than continuing to let time slip away while his child died.

He was to the point of tearing out one of his own ribs and offering up as enticement for the Devil.

This might be close to that, he figured. Sarek, with his calm stance and ancient eyes, probably was a devil in disguise. He hadn't mentioned the price for his magic yet, and Leonard couldn't imagine the fee, whether it was monetary or not, being small.

He drew in a deep breath. It did little to calm him down.

Sarek had focused on the world around him again. He was looking at Leonard. "I believe I can help you."

Leonard's shoulders felt bow-string tight. "What'll it cost?"

"I don't ask a price for myself."

"No," he agreed, "the price is for the magic. What will it take?"

Sarek closed the journal and handed it to him. "That I cannot tell you, Mr. McCoy. What price does your healing magic demand?"

Leonard stopped breathing. "How did you...?"

"All mages are kindred. Just as you recognized my magic, I too recognized yours." There was no disingenuousness in Sarek's eyes. "Your hands are touched the most by it but the reservoir lives there." He pointed to the center of Leonard's chest.

Leonard shifted on his feet, uncomfortable at the thought that Sarek could piece him together so easily. "It's no good to me right now, which is why I need you."

"And you shall have my help. There is a spell—" Sarek's voice cut off abruptly, and the man turned to the closed door.

A bad feeling swept down Leonard's spine. "Sarek?"

"A moment" came the soft reply. The other man shaped the air in his hand, but whatever he saw in that shape did not pose a threat, as tension left him moments later. "I had forgotten," he said.

Leonard knew that murmur wasn't for him. He waited to have Sarek's attention again. When he did have it, it came with a surprise:

"Would you like to meet my son?"

The question was so out-of-the-blue, so awkwardly normal, it rocked Leonard back onto his heels. "Excuse me?"

"My son has arrived." Sarek clearly did not comprehend the strangeness of his sudden change in topic. "Allow me to make the introduction."

"But—"

"If I do not do so at this time, Mr. McCoy," Leonard was informed with an air of amusement, even if Sarek's face gave away no inkling of his feelings, "it will only delay this day's work. My son can be... a determined individual in regard to family affairs."

Sarek was already heading for the door like Leonard had agreed to the request. Leonard closed his mouth and, seeing no other option, followed obediently.

They ended up on the other side of the house, where a tall dark-haired man stood with his back to them in a foyer, cell phone in hand. The man turned in their direction as Sarek strode forward, saying, "Spock."

Leonard stayed some distance away because it wasn't his place to be in the middle of a family reunion. And a reunion it did look like, for there was a large suitcase by the front door, white airport tags attached to one of its handles.

The man named Spock fixed his gaze over his father's shoulder and scrutinized Leonard. Leonard scrutinized him back, making a point with his posture that he didn't give a damn about whatever conclusions the guy came up with. So what if he wasn't neatly dressed like Spock? If he was in old jeans and a tattered shirt instead of a pressed suit with a perfectly straight tie and a pin on the lapel which rivaled the pomposity of the—

Leonard felt a punch to his gut, his eyes tracking back to the pin. Without knowing it, he moved away, hands curling at his sides. "What is this?"

Spock stepped around his father, giving Leonard a clear view of the insignia on the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

_Fuck._

Leonard's first instinct was to flee. His body twitched as if to do exactly that.

"_Mr. McCoy._" The whip-like crack of Sarek's voice caught and held Leonard fast.

Leonard threw out an accusing finger. "Is this a fucking _joke?_ He's a Fed!" There was no hiding the fear beneath the hot anger of his words. Dread, something close to panic, started to weigh down his limbs. "You bastard, this whole time you planned to—"

"Do not speak to my father that way," Spock interrupted, voice cold.

Leonard felt his upper lip curl.

Sarek lifted his hands. "Do not be alarmed, Mr. McCoy. It is my mistake that I did not recall today my son was to return home. Had I remembered, I would not have asked you to come. But what is done, is done. I give you my word: there is nothing you need fear while you are in this house."

Leonard almost said "I don't believe you" but Sarek held his eyes until Leonard swallowed the words.

"You came to me for help. Let me help you. Spock will not be involved."

Spock shifted to give his father a look, seeming as startled by this pronouncement as Leonard. Leonard looked between the two men and didn't know what the hell to think. He drew in a long breath and thought about how close he was to his goal. He'd come this far. Even if Sarek was a traitor, Leonard still needed his magic.

He cursed for the umpteenth time in his head and said, voice not shaking but not quite steady either, "Fine. I didn't see him—" He stared hard at Spock. "—and he didn't see me."

Spock seemed unimpressed by the baleful glare and put his back to Leonard. "Father, I will unpack."

Despite what Leonard had just said, the show of insolence scratched his temper. He bit out, "You got a problem, _Spock?_"

Spock picked up his suitcase. "I believe the person with the issue is you, sir." The man glanced at his father, gaze curious.

"Leonard McCoy," Sarek supplied.

Shit, thought Leonard, he should have used an alias.

"Hm," said Spock. He assessed Leonard for the second time.

Leonard managed to hold his tongue. He hadn't seemed to piss Spock off by just existing, but that didn't mean shit. Most agents didn't need more than a flimsy excuse to go after a Marked, so he sure as hell shouldn't give this bastard a reason to look sideways at him.

It seemed the smart thing to do was to fix his gaze on an obscure spot above Spock's head and pretend not to care as Spock studied him like an insect under a microscope.

"Spock," Sarek's voice broke into the tense silence in the foyer, "please come to the kitchen once you have finished unpacking."

Spock inclined his head in agreement and headed for a set of stairs without glancing back. Leonard felt equally relieved and pissed.

Sarek waited until Spock was gone from sight to move past Leonard, ridiculously regal and serene, back the way they'd come. Leonard went after him, once again feeling like he didn't have a choice in the matter.

"We're going to do the spell?" he said, more as a hope than a question.

"No," answered the mage. "We will go to the kitchen to wait for my son."

In that moment, Leonard finally understood what all that raw power had cost Sarek over the years. The man was crazy.

And it was just Leonard's usual dumb luck to be stuck with him.

* * *

While waiting, Sarek produced one of those giant books which had detailed maps of each state in the US. He explained to Leonard the theory of a locator spell. Spells left behind a residue that could be traced, and sometimes it took decades, even a century, for that residue to completely fade. It depended on the strength of the caster of the spell. Curses in particular were spells which required a lot of energy in order to be sustained for long periods of time, so a curse-worker was often more powerful than the average mage.

Sarek said the last location of the curse-maker was identified in stages, starting with a region and ending with, hopefully, a city. The McCoy family's curse-maker was likely dead, but his final resting place would still hold some semblance of the power he held in life. And mages were often buried with relics of their magic.

"If he wasn't burned," Leonard pointed out. The family had to be important in high places if they wanted to claim a burial plot for a Marked. Even then, it didn't always happen. They could taint the very earth, many people believed, in life or in death.

Sarek only replied, "Let us hope for the best."

At that point Spock came into the kitchen and Leonard hated him for the interruption. Since Spock appeared quite unsurprised to once again be in Leonard's presence, Leonard increased the intensity of his glowering. He didn't want the fool to assume _he_ approved of the company.

"Father, is there a reason why you wished to see me?"

"Have a seat, my son," Sarek said even as he stood up and left the kitchen table. "There are many things I would speak of to you but in the essence of time I will only say, I am pleased you are home."

Leonard turned his head to the side, suddenly and acutely wishing he was elsewhere.

"As am I. ...Do you require my help in any matter?" The question was polite but cautiously phrased.

"No."

However, it was the hesitation in Sarek's voice that caused Leonard to look around. Sarek was watching Spock with a keen interest.

"There are some items I must prepare. Perhaps you would be amendable to looking after my guest while I work?"

Leonard jumped up from his chair. "I'll go with you!"

Sarek had apparently already made up his mind. "I think it best if you waited here, Mr. McCoy."

If Sarek's son had a bemused face, he had to be wearing it right then. For his part, Leonard was re-evaluating his impression of Sarek: the man wasn't just crazy, he was one hundred and ten percent bat-shit crazy.

"Excellent," murmured Sarek, no doubt taking the silence in the kitchen as agreement. With his book of maps tucked under one arm, Sarek left Spock and Leonard to sort out themselves on their own.

* * *

Five minutes later of no conversation and surreptitious looks at Spock, a buzzing started under Leonard's skin. He ignored it and chewed on his bottom lip as he thought.

There had to be a good reason why Sarek left him with Spock, only Leonard couldn't figure it out. Was this a trap? Maybe a game the two played with some unsuspecting idiot?

Leonard didn't want to be that idiot so why was he still sitting here? He should be with Sarek. Hell, he'd carelessly left the journal in the man's care.

Leonard pushed away from the kitchen table, only to immediately hear, "If my father has asked you to wait, it would be wise to obey."

He challenged, "Why?"

Spock had dark, emotionless eyes to match his emotionless face. That must be a lesson taught to all federal agents, Leonard concluded. _Can't have them giving away government secrets on the whim of a laugh._ He gave a derisive snort.

Sarek's son was odd in that he completely ignored Leonard's belligerence and opted instead to ask, "Would you care for something to drink?"

Leonard figured his stare was answer enough, and kept on staring at the back of Spock's head as the man went about the business of making himself tea. Just as Spock reached for a mug in a cupboard, a question unexpectedly burst out of him: "How the hell can you be one of _them?_"

Spock set the mug down on the kitchen counter. "I do not see how my choice of employment is your concern."

Leonard took that statement for the bait that it was. "You know what they do to people like your father—or doesn't that matter to you?" He dropped his hands under the table and dug his fingers into his knees, acknowledging that the bitter taste at the back of his throat was hatred. "Of course it doesn't. You're not like us, are you?"

Spock stiffened minutely but did turn to meet Leonard's eyes. "You are correct. I am not like my father."

Leonard's upper lip wanted to curl again. "Thought so." The hard edge to his tone grew harder. "Just so we're clear... If you think I'll let you put me in cuffs, you're wrong. Fucking wrong," he repeated.

Spock turned back to the empty mug and a kettle of boiling water on the stove. "I decided to visit my parent while on leave, Mr. McCoy. Unless you choose to make this event significant, I do not intend to return to duty until I must."

Leonard didn't know how to take that. If it was an olive branch, it was a poor one. Everyone knew Feds lied through their teeth. He couldn't trust Spock. It would be a fatal mistake, he just knew it.

Resuming their silence seemed the better option. Leonard transferred his stare to the bay window. He could see the courtyard and the trees. Their bare branches swayed in a silence perhaps heavier than the one in the kitchen. He didn't think there was any wind; nothing else in the courtyard moved.

Spock stood at the far end of the kitchen, mug in hand. He had his cell phone in the other. Its screen had to be inordinately fascinating.

A prickling started at the back of Leonard's neck. He rubbed at it. Minutes passed but the feeling lingered. "Where's your bathroom?" he asked abruptly.

Spock's head came up. He blinked.

"Bathroom, restroom, toilet!" snapped Leonard, bristling.

Spock told him. Leonard jammed his hands into his pockets and strode out of the kitchen. As soon he judged he was far enough away from the kitchen, he went in search of Sarek.

* * *

Admittedly, Leonard got lost. Most of the doors in the never-ending hallway turned out to be mahogany. He came close to stomping back to the kitchen, thought about dragging that no-good Fed out by his ear and shaking Sarek's location out of him.

Of course, it was likely he'd end up shot before he laid a hand on Spock. Spock might be on vacation but Leonard wasn't foolish enough to think the man wasn't wearing a holstered gun under that suit jacket while in the presence of the enemy.

So he did the next best thing: he stilled his breathing and asked politely to be shown the way. The hallway matched him in stillness for a few moments; then a tugging at his clothes led him. He took only a few steps before he remembered what else he had to fear besides Spock.

But it had to remain irrelevant. Had to. Sarek said he was going to help, and there had been no guile in that promise.

The tugging stopped at the door he sought. It was closed. Leonard laid a palm against the wood. To his relief, the protection spells had been disengaged. He considered knocking but decided against it because any unexpected sound could throw Sarek off-stride if he were in the middle of spell-casting. Instead, slow and with care, Leonard turned the knob.

A sense of _wrongness_ washed over him before the door was fully open. He almost choked on it as he fumbled past the threshold.

The room was a nightmare. Everything had been torn asunder, splintered or destroyed. In the center of it all, Sarek lay prone across the line of the charred circle, eyes wide-open and clouded.

Fear tried to hold Leonard back; instinct drove him forward. He dropped to his knees and reached for Sarek at the same time he closed his eyes. As soon as they connected, he heard a wailing of sorrow and fury, distant, many voices caught in a windstorm, heard like a heartbeat invisible fists pounding against the outer walls of the house. He forced himself to ignore it all and concentrate, letting his magic spin out under his hands and into Sarek.

Emptiness where there was once life; life—a parody of it, utterly alien—where there should be none. He felt the moment the thing became aware of him.

It had a voice that sounded like shards of broken glass. Every shard cried at Leonard, _You!_

It had fingers of ice that let go of Sarek's bones and reached for his.

And it had mad, restless eyes of the same lizard green that Leonard's eyes turned to when he healed.

In every sense—body, mind, and magic—Leonard recoiled, full of the fear and knowledge that whatever had struck down Sarek was not finished. There was something it wanted but did not yet have. Something it recognized in _him_.

He came back to the room with a jerk, opened his eyes and found his fingers loosening from a stiff, unfamiliar position. Sarek was cold beneath him. Leonard stared at him helplessly. His mouth had the dry, papery taste of ash.

Nothing to be done. He knew it with deep certainty, didn't need the voice of logic inside him to say it. There was nothing he could do, not for Sarek. His magic wasn't the kind to bring back the dead.

A sudden noise, maybe a suppressed inhale or nearly inaudible gasp, told Leonard he was not alone. A shadow must have filled the doorway while he was in the thrall of a green-eyed monster and frozen there. It was Sarek's son, Spock, his face colorless, expression shifting, cracking like a mask that couldn't contain that which lived beneath it. For a moment, Leonard saw himself as Spock saw him—and the image was damning.

He took his hands off Sarek's chest. He might have cried something inarticulate, a warning, but Spock came to life anyway, swiftly, and knelt by his father's body. It was self-preservation that made Leonard push away and stand up. He swallowed hard as he watched Spock's fingers press deep into Sarek's neck. When those fingers trembled, Leonard had to look away.

The table was upturned, books shredded, pens scattered. By Leonard's feet, a blackened jar had shattered and something foul leaked out of it, forming a puddle. Candles lay broken in half, their wicks was still smoking at one end. Although it seemed impossible, the hearth was a burnt-out shell in the wall.

And suddenly Leonard saw it in his desperate glance around the room: loose pages, the maps. Somehow, to some end before he had been attacked, Sarek had started the spell with them. Three bore marks. Leonard couldn't tell if the marks were in red ink or blood.

He took a step towards them.

As if that was a catalyst, the air in the room changed. Leonard's attention snapped back to Spock. Energy was gathering around the man, slowly at first, then starting to snowball until it nearly crackled. Spock lifted his head and locked eyes with Leonard. Though they were no longer emotionless, Leonard could understand nothing in those glazed eyes—not until the grief faded from them and the promise of death came.

Spock's voice was an eerie, flat echo when he said, "_What have you done?_"

Leonard didn't think. He snatched up the maps and ran.

He didn't get far before under and around him, the house started trembling with rage. _Different, my ass_, Leonard thought as a nearby mirror fell off a wall and crashed to the floor. Spock took after his father.

He half-expected furniture to come flying at him, to knock him down, but when he ducked through a door to the outside he was unharmed. It wasn't until Leonard had stumbled down the terrace steps and raced headlong across the courtyard that he realized the peril of mindless flight. He was on the wrong path.

Something nasty sank teeth into his ankles. Leonard jerked out of its grip and fell sideways with a near-cry, skinning the palms of his hands as he caught himself. One of the maps almost sailed away. Leonard grabbed at it and came back with an arm coated in gray. The ground, he realized in shock, was covered in ashes. Mixed with the dirt, it made the yard smell of iron, richer than a man's blood.

His heart leapt at a crack of thunder. The thunder came again, then once more but not from the sky: one after the other, limbs were snapping off the trees and melting like bones in fire. Ash was all they left behind. The thing which had killed Sarek was killing his magic too.

Leonard shook off the wild darkness trying to ensnare him and rolled to his feet. He fought and swore his way from the dying magic until he was completely free of it, or it was too weak to fight him. He didn't know. At last he burst through the gate and into a different world, a place of hot, shrunken shadows and the shimmering glare of noon. From there, Leonard did the only sensible thing—the very thing he had been doing all along: he kept running.


	5. Part Four

**Now posted at AO3 for your e-reader convenience! Under username klmeri.**

* * *

**Part Four**

Leonard took a deep breath and knocked on a door. After a moment of waiting, he nervously checked down the empty hallway, drew in another mouthful of air, and called a name in his softest voice before knocking again. The door opened a crack to expose a long chain and the suspicious eye of someone behind it.

"How did you know where to find me?" asked that eye's owner.

Leonard held up a wrinkled blue envelope. "I took a leap of faith your return address wasn't a lie." A second passed, then another, while Leonard received a baleful glare. He figured he ought to be polite. "Can I come in?"

The door shut, and there came the sound of the chain being removed. When it opened again, a young woman with folded arms blocked the entranceway. "I don't know that I want you in my house, Leonard McCoy."

"Christine..."

"Don't 'Christine' me. I think I have the right to slam this door in your face."

A low-burning anger flared. "Damn it, woman, just let me in!"

Her chin came up. "No."

The elevator dinged at the end of the hallway, and Leonard put his back to that direction without thinking, the line of his shoulders curving in tightly.

The woman he was arguing with, after observing this reaction with sharp blue eyes, surmised rather unsympathetically, "So you're in trouble."

"Chances are I'm going to prison for murder."

Her look shifted toward speculation. "_Did_ you murder somebody?"

"No."

For a second, Leonard thought he'd lost his chance entirely, but Christine glanced away before releasing a long sigh through her nose, the kind that said _why do I even know you?_ and took a step back from the door.

"I guess we have something to talk about, then," she said before disappearing into her apartment.

Relieved, Leonard followed her. Being out of the public eye, despite that no one in this city was currently interested in watching a stranger like him or knew yet that they should be interested in his activities, eased some of the tension in Leonard. The darkness of Christine's living room made him feel even more secure. That darkness must have suited her too, because she reached for a lamp but seemed to think better of turning it on at the last second and shifted to face him in the dark. A streetlamp from beyond the windows gave just enough light to illuminate the outline of her body.

"You're a son of a bitch," she said.

"And you're frankest woman I ever met. Thanks for letting me in."

"I didn't do it for you."

He gave a slight nod. "I know." As his companion's eyes glinted in the dark, his unease returned. "Can you turn on the lamp?"

"Afraid?"

Leonard laughed softly. "Only in that I can't tell if you're planning to knife me or not—but I doubt I'd see it coming anyway, if that's what you were set on doing."

Christine switched on a table lamp. "I wouldn't kill you, Len, but only because your daughter is still fond of you. On the day that's no longer true..." She smiled too sweetly at him.

Leonard looked away, thinking that if Joanna died he would be _grateful_ to have someone put him out of his misery. He forced himself to return his gaze to Christine.

She wasn't smiling anymore. "You look like shit."

Leonard rubbed his eyebrow with a thumbnail and answered vaguely, "I've had better days."

Suddenly, Christine's body angled away from him. Her admission was abrupt. "Same."

That was when he saw what he should have noticed right away: the circles under her eyes, the deep grooves of her cheeks, the jut of her collarbone. A loose-knit sweater exposed her shoulders in a such way that signified she had lost weight since last time they had seen each other. Christine had always been petite in size but now she looked frighteningly frail.

Like Jo.

Leonard set aside any negative feelings and focused on his concern. "Is the insomnia back?"

Christine hugged her middle. "It's Jocelyn. She's been haunting me lately. I didn't know why until..." She turned to him, her gaze both pained and accusing. "Until I heard from your father," she finished.

_Fuck_, Leonard thought. He didn't know what to say.

"You should have told me."

Christine sounded like she hated him.

"I couldn't."

"Why not! Did you think it would be a kindness to call me the day after she died—or not call me at all? Well, _fuck you_. I'm her _godmother_."

"Fine," Leonard snapped back, head jerking up, "I didn't want to! But let's get something straight, Chris. I may be the world's biggest bastard but I'm also Joanna's father. I told you from the start it wouldn't do you any good to keep in contact with us."

Though he half-expected the slap to his face, it still made him step backward in surprise. Christine's fingers curled into a fist as if she intended to full-out punch him in the second round.

He caught her wrist and held it fast with the warning, "That's enough."

"Let go!" she cried, tearing at his fingers. "Why did you have to come into our lives, Len? _Why?_"

He lowered her arm and, after some reluctance, let go of her wrist. "I used to ask myself that a lot but since Jo came along?" He shook his head. "I can't regret it. I'm sorry, Chris, I am—" Christine's eyes squeezed shut. He waited until she opened them again to speak. "—but you can't hold me responsible for Jocelyn's death."

Seeing the resignation in her eyes was worse than seeing the hatred.

"I don't blame you," Christine said. "Not anymore. I just... Joanna is all that's left of my best friend, and you weren't going to tell me I might lose her too. For that, you _are_ a bastard."

"I'm sorry," Leonard said again.

Christine wrapped her arms back around her middle and crossed the room. "I guess you might be here a while. Do you want something to drink?"

"Water's fine."

Leonard stood awkwardly in her living room until she came back. He looked at the bottle in her hand.

"What?" came the challenge.

"That's not water," he remarked dryly.

Christine held out a glass to Leonard, which was actually filled with tap water, and twisted the top off the bottle once one of her hands was free. "The whiskey's for me." True to her word, she took a swallow straight from the bottle, not sputtering afterwards with the practice of someone long used to the whiskey's burn. They both sat down on the floor, out of a half-forgotten memory.

Leonard was already regretting his choice of beverage. He drained his glass in hopes Chapel would take pity on him and share. Now that he thought about it, he surely could use the liquor. Being sober didn't seem to have any advantages over being drunk.

"Nope," commented Christine, as though she could read his mind. "The last time we got wasted together..." She made a face.

"The sex wasn't that bad."

"What the hell do you know? You don't remember it."

It was the first and only time they had slept together. Leonard had woken up the morning after in a small room at Ole Miss in confusion, vaguely certain since he wasn't a student he wasn't supposed to be on campus, much less in a girl's dormitory, and missing his pants. Then his night of heavy drinking had made itself known with a terrible vengeance: he'd wound up on his knees puking for an hour straight in the communal bathroom, to the disgust of several young female college students. That was how he met Jocelyn. She had laughed at him, kindly bathed his sweaty face and asked him his name (because apparently her roommate Christine had no clue). Later—after nearly two years of on-and-off dating—Jocelyn came to him with the news that she was pregnant.

It wasn't a romantic story by any stretch of the imagination, not with either woman, but at least some of the memories were good ones. Once upon a time, Leonard had had a girl would hold his hand in public and flip her long hair at anyone who looked askance at the scar on his wrist; and once upon a time, Christine—like Jocelyn—had been another person he could talk to.

He didn't know what they were now, except temporary drinking buddies.

Leonard gave her the most pathetic expression he could muster. Christine rolled her eyes but lifted the whiskey bottle in his direction. He took it with a heartfelt "Thank you."

"I want you gone in the morning," she said as he took off the cap.

"I will be," he promised.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her mouth and stood up. The light from the table lamp cast a strange shadow across her face. "I'll be going down to stay with Joanna for a while. I've already put in for leave from work."

Leonard didn't say anything because Christine wasn't asking for his permission and they both knew it. She turned and walked away, and he watched her go.

It was the ache in his heart that made him call out at the last second: "Hey, Chris!"

She paused in the archway between the living room and hall with a surprisingly tolerant expression.

"I ditched my phone. Tell my dad that, and not to worry. I'll try to find a way to let him know how things are going." After swallowing hard, he added quietly, "And tell Jo I miss her."

Christine watched him for a long moment, then asked, "Do you know where you're headed?"

He ran a hand over his face but said, "There's a map—somebody I have to follow."

"Even when your child needs you? How is anything more important than her?"

Leonard didn't reply, and he had the feeling Christine judged him based him on his silence. Nonetheless, she didn't press the matter and left, he presumed, for her bedroom, where no doubt she would lock herself in for the night. He poured a generous amount of whiskey into his glass, drained and refilled it twice.

The ache at his temples was a warning that his body hadn't had a drink as strong as this in a long time. Alcohol always messed with his magic. Up to his late twenties, that hadn't been reason enough to limit his intake. His mindset had changed once Joanna was born, and he kept to one or two beers or a single shot of the harder stuff. But tonight Leonard didn't want to go easy on himself, or be fair. He didn't want to think beyond how much was left at the bottom of the bottle. With every swallow, the whiskey burned a smooth path to his stomach and made him feel warm from the inside out.

Hours later, he woke up face-down on a rug which hadn't seen a vacuum in a while. The taste in his mouth was foul. Beside his left hand was the empty whiskey bottle; in front of his nose was the crumpled blue envelope he thought he had hidden in an inner pocket of his jacket. Because it looked strange even to his bloodshot eyes, he reached for it. The thing turned out to be full of cash.

Leonard rolled onto his back and pressed the envelope against his forehead. After facing Christine's anger last night he hadn't had the heart to ask for money like he had originally intended, but of course she would have known that's what he wanted. Friends who were no better than strangers didn't show up in the middle of the night just to say howdy-do. People who couldn't be bothered to say "thanks for sending my kid birthday and Christmas cards every year" didn't visit out of the kindness of their hearts.

He sighed and made a silent promise. Christine Chapel wouldn't be just another name on a long list of debts he owed. He would pay her back someday.

The voice in his head, whether a product of his drinking or just his nature, was much more cynical than the one in his heart. _Yeah right_, it said, _and just who are you trying to fool?_

_Everyone_, he countered, and let it go at that.

Leonard cleaned himself up without making too much of a mess of Christine's bathroom and left the apartment building as inconspicuously as could be managed. Once securely in the car he'd traded for his truck on the way out of North Carolina, he pulled a burner phone out of the glove box and dialed a number he rarely used.

His contact answered on the fourth ring, like always: "So you're driving past a graveyard. How many dead people are in there?"

Leonard rolled his eyes and answered obligingly, "I don't know, how many?"

"_All of them!_" There was a peel of laughter from the other end of the line.

"Where the fuck are you getting your jokes, Scotty?"

"Joke-a-pedia dot com. Like Wikipedia, only funnier."

Despite himself, Leonard felt his mouth stretch in a smile. "It's been a long time, I guess. How're you doing? How's Keenser?"

"Longer for you, methinks, if word on the street is anything to go by. I'd say I'm shocked to hear from you, my friend, but... yeah. And don't ask about Keenser. I loathe Keenser right now."

"You always do."

"People say that to me all the time! You know what? I'm not making this shit up, man, he's a little fuckin' demon—like _literally_. Little. Fucking. Demon. One day I was shaving in front of the mirror and the bastard popped right up in the glass with his fugly black eyes and scared the shit of me. I almost slit my own throat!"

Leonard's smile turned into a grin. "That was probably the point."

"Hardy-har-har. Here's a grand idea: why don't you swing by this way? I got a poltergeist I can lend you for your truck."

Leonard cleared his throat. They would wander farther off-track if he didn't get to the point. While he considered Scotty to be the closest thing he had to a real friend, part of the reason why they never talked too often was that it kept them on good terms. "You said something about 'word on the street'. How bad is it?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, "I was just trying to think up an accurate comparison and couldn't. It's _that_ bad. You know the guy who's after you is a Fed, right?"

"It was kinda hard to miss. He even parted his hair straight down the middle."

Scotty snorted. "They think they're the Men In Black, when really—"

"No," Leonard interrupted firmly, "we are _not_ bringing up aliens."

"You take all the joy out of these discussions." There was a pause. "But you know they're real, right? Like if I can be haunted by a demon from the underworld, and you can make people grow back thumbs, why can't there be life on Mars?"

"Shut _up_, Scotty. Tell me about Spock."

"That's a contradiction. Am I supposed to shut up or talk?"

"Damn it, man!" Leonard growled over the line. "Is the son of a bitch following me or not?"

"You can't tell?"

"I don't know," said Leonard, glancing in paranoia through his rearview mirror. "More 'n more, I get this feeling that he's standing right around a corner or in the next room. I can't sleep because if I do, it's like something latches onto me. Maybe a tracking spell or some shit. You know his father did that kind of thing for pay. So, how close is he?"

"Hold up, I'm working on it. I'd tell you how I can oh-so-brilliantly hack into a federal GPS database but you wouldn't understand it. Ah, here we go. S-p-o-c-k, Spock Sss—heck no, what I'm not even gonna try to pronounce that last name. Or is it first name? One can never tell these days."

"_Scotty._"

"Right. Got his agent number. A few clicks, and..."

The line grew so silent, Leonard checked his phone to make certain they hadn't been disconnected. "Scotty?" he called, feeling his stomach do an unpleasant flop.

"This is not good," came a mumbled response. "Oh, this is _not_ good."

"What is it?"

"I can't find him."

Leonard gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. "What?"

"He's off Fed-radar." For the first time, Montgomery Scott sounded nervous. "Look, when I heard about—about the _thing_, I did a little checking. This guy's cold-blooded. I mean, the kind of cold-blooded where his record shows more apprehended users in body bags than handcuffs."

"Fuck," Leonard said softly. Spock hadn't seemed like a psychopath in that brief interlude at Sarek's house. He had made tea and looked Leonard in the eyes without the usual hatred Leonard was accustomed to seeing.

That... obviously didn't count for shit. Leonard closed his eyes. If Spock was the type of agent the government used to "clean up" the mage population, then he didn't stand a chance. And given the fact that he had seen for himself that Spock was a child of two worlds, was able to tap into the supernatural like his father...

It didn't bear thinking about.

"Thanks for the heads-up," he said to his friend, voice thick with an emotion he didn't care to name. "You, uh, probably won't hear from me for a while."

"Wait, McCoy—_Leonard_—no matter what the bullshit is going around, I know you didn't do it. Okay, so when the bulletin says you're a con artist, and a sometimes-thief, that's not a lie—but you're _not_ a murderer."

"Does that count for anything?" Leonard argued quietly.

Scotty's answer was equally quiet. "I wish it did."

"Believe me, when it finally does count, this will be a world we don't recognize. 'Course, I figure by the time that happens, if ever," said Leonard bitterly, "you and I will be long dead."

"In that case, I gonna pull a Keenser and terrify the shit out of everybody in my afterlife."

Leonard huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh on a better day. "I'll be right there with you, buddy. So long."

"Yeah," Scotty replied, and hung up.

Leonard set the cell phone down on the car seat beside him and gazed out the windshield. There wasn't much choice now. Wasn't much time.

He pulled out the folded paper from the glove box that had been beneath the phone and looked at it. When he had had a chance to actually inspect what he had snitched from Sarek's house, it had befuddled him at first. He had four maps—Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa—and at least one red mark on each. There had been no discernible pattern between them until he had gotten tired of jumbling the papers around. But after Leonard had trimmed the maps and taped them together along their matching borders...

He saw it for what it was: not the mismatched circles but the trail leading up the Mississippi River.

So that's what he had to do, follow that trail, and hope to God the one person who might have helped him, who was dead _because of him_, hadn't been so crazy after all.

Leonard tapped a finger against the state of Kentucky, at a little blue splotch titled _Fork Lake_, and wondered what he would find there. Then he had a sudden vision of vivid green eyes and shuddered, afraid that presence was exactly what he was set to encounter.

* * *

_August 2013_

The library was a crosshatch of faint, dusty light and smelled of wood polish. Distantly, there came the sound of a copier in the throes of printing and the creak of old stairs.

Leonard stuck an ink pen behind his ear, rolled up a much-abused spiral-bound notebook, and slapped the thing lightly against his thigh. "Are you sure you don't remember anything else?" he asked, trying to keep his frustration out of his voice.

His companion's eyes narrowed at him. "Where are you from?"

Leonard pursed his mouth.

"Your accent," insisted a lady old enough to be Leonard's grandmother, "I haven't heard it before 'cept on the tv. Where are you from, young man?"

"Georgia," he replied. "At least originally, I am."

"Iowa's a long way from Georgia."

"Ain't that the truth," he muttered, then cleared his throat. "Listen, are you sure there's nothing else you can tell me? I got..." He pretended to peek into his notebook even though he knew the number by heart. "...four dead children. That was it, just four?"

She looked him over slowly like she hadn't been eyeing him since the moment he stepped into the building. "What'd you say this was about again?"

"A book. I'm writing a book on the Occult." Generally, he didn't need to offer more explanation than that to get someone talking. It was a desire many people had to link even the most mundane of daily happenings to the supernatural, a desire Leonard didn't share or even understand.

"Is my name going in it?"

"Sure, if you want."

"Ms. Ida Cottrill. I know you wrote it down, but let me see if you spelled it right."

Leonard ground his back teeth, willing the return of some of his patience, and opened his notebook for her. He thought she would give it a sparing glance but the head librarian/only town historian snatched it right out of his hands. He tried to snag the thing back, but she tottered off a little ways and hemmed and hawed over the page's contents.

"I had my suspicions those killings weren't natural. They didn't make much about it in the paper at the time, 'cept to say the area was dangerous to campers, especially families with kids. News didn't even make it all the way up to Muscatine. Though of course," she said, casting one bright eye at him, "that was the sheriff's doin'. He's on the City Council over in their county now. Imagine that."

"Imagine that," Leonard agreed dryly. "Can I have that back, please?"

She snapped the notebook shut and laid it on the table between them. "I'm gonna ask you something, Mr. Smith."

Leonard just looked at her, because it wasn't like it mattered to the lady if he was okay with an interrogation. For the duration of the afternoon, she had peppered him with more questions than he had probably asked himself since he started digging into his family's curse nearly two months ago and following a string of dots on a big map.

"In all the US, why this town?" she said before gazing pointedly at the Mark on his wrist.

Leonard ruthlessly suppressed the urge to tug his jacket sleeve over it.

"And why now, when you would've been a bitty thing? It was sixteen years ago."

"I wasn't 'bitty'," Leonard pointed out. "I was fourteen." He took a minute to mull over the rest of his answer. "Listen, I'll show you something that might help you understand—but in return, I want the names of the other three children. Okay?"

She pursed her mouth just as he had earlier. "I told you there were four, and I showed you the articles and the records. Yet you seem so sure I've stuck a lie in there somewhere."

"Not a lie, ma'am, just a missing piece of the puzzle." He flipped to the most dog-eared page of the notebook. "See for yourself."

She leaned over the table, adjusting her spectacles as she did so, to see what he was pointing at. A chart, composed of staggering columns, question marks, and Leonard's atrocious shorthand, was faintly visible beneath dried coffee stains.

After a moment, Ida the Librarian made a clucking noise. "You think this is a pattern?"

He admitted, "I don't know. But I've been to each place, asked the same questions I've asked you, and there's too much about it to be coincidence. It has to be an event that keeps reoccurring, because of something or—"

"Magic," the woman supplied.

Leonard closed his mouth with a click. He had been going to say 'someone'. Because only people committed serial killings, didn't they?

That is, if the drownings were serial killings. He couldn't be 100%-positive of that. With every answer he garnered, the mystery grew stranger, and he couldn't yet picture how it was connected to his family or the curse-maker he wanted to find. Today he was researching the last red mark on the map, Little Spirit Lake, and coming up none-the-wiser.

The librarian pointed to a name on his chart. "Whiteside County—I have relatives over there. They always said that lake was haunted."

Not before 1990 they wouldn't have, Leonard thought to himself. "Seven kids drowned in three weeks. See the ones before Morrison? Same thing happened at each of those too."

"But none of these are in Iowa."

"No," he said. "I've been making my way up the Mississippi since July."

He had never stretched his hunting ground farther north than St. Louis, so while traveling from Kentucky to Missouri, the days had slipped past with a certain familiarity; but since crossing into Illinois, then Iowa, Leonard had grown uncomfortable and antsy. He hated and anticipated every second on the way here.

She lifted her head and looked at him to scrutinize his expression. "I have to say, when you walked in I thought you might have been one of the crazy ones."

Leonard slid the notebook away from her and tucked it under his arm. "'Course you did," he said as evenly as he could manage. "Isn't that why you made me search this library by myself, so you could stay by the phone in case you had to call the police?" He glanced away. "You're not the first to make assumptions, lady. And as sure as the sun don't shine in hell, you won't be the last."

When he met her eyes again, she was already arguing, "You can't fault me for a natural reaction."

Leonard's hand may have clenched into a fist, but only for a second. There was a middle-aged man over by the window with an eye on him that didn't look friendly. "Yes, I can."

The woman only shook her head, as if he had disappointed her. "I'm no rights activist, Mr. Smith, and I don't believe in it either. You won't find a lot of that in this town, so my advice to you is don't linger in one place too long."

"Tell me about the rest of the children, and you won't have to see me again."

She hesitated. "I remember there was a boy that almost drowned. After him, there weren't any others."

Just one? "Did he say who tried to drown him?"

"Rumor was his wits were so addled afterward, nobody could make sense of anything the poor child said. It wasn't even a year later, the mother uprooted them both and left town. To be honest, that was a relief for a lot of folk. That woman was as stubborn as they came—she never would say who the boy's father was. Probably didn't know but she acted like he mighta been sired by God himself." She gave a huff like she might have said something humorous.

Leonard wasn't amused. He was worn down, uncertain, and afraid and that shortened his temper and sharpened his tongue. "I guess gossip didn't tell you where they went."

She sat down in a chair. "Upstate. That's all I know."

Leonard closed his eyes. Why wasn't life ever simple? Of course, if life could be simple, he wouldn't be chasing a lead like this with the air of a desperate man. He tried the ploy of letting some of that desperation leak into his voice. "Ma'am, it's important that I find 'im. Can you at least tell me his name? Or the family name?"

"This book must be mighty special for you to go to such trouble. I told you already, it's sixteen years over and done with. If I were you—"

"You aren't me!" he snapped. "You won't ever _be_ me, or know what it's like to be me! Now give me the fuckin' name!"

Leonard knew in the instant she reeled back, he had screwed up. He didn't need the fingers suddenly digging into his arm or the hot breath whistling past his ear to confirm it.

"This man bothering you, Miss Ida?" growled that voice. Leonard was jerked around to face the guy who had been watching him. "Maybe we should call the police."

"You do that," challenged Leonard. "Have one of your lazy-ass deputies haul his butt outta the local doughnut shop and tell him to lock me up for a casual conversation."

The man's jaw flexed. "I could say you attacked me."

Leonard gave him a nasty smile. "In that case, why bother with a lie?" He twisted his arm out of the idiot's grip and pulled back his fist.

"_Mr. Smith!_" shrilled the librarian.

Leonard used that second of anticipation in the air to picture actually hitting the asshole in front of him then he lowered his hand. To Ida, he said, "I was just gonna oblige him."

Ida's shrewd gaze burned into his. "I think you should leave now."

Leonard let another moment pass, while the boorish man at his side waited to attack and the woman judged him, before initiating a mocking bow in her direction. "Thanks for all your help, ma'am."

His aggressor didn't immediately step aside, but Ida called the man sharply by first name and so Leonard was able to pass without incident. He forewent slamming his way out of the library in one final display of temper because it would bring him more attention, which he didn't need.

On the cracked sidewalk, Leonard jammed a hand into his hair. He stewed in silence for a minute, then with a curse turned for the parking lot and his car.

There was no way he could walk into a police station and ask about a sixteen year-old case. It had already been difficult enough ferreting out information town-to-town without drawing the eyes of the law. Because the moment the law saw him, he was done for and any hope for Joanna was gone along with him.

He had made it this far without an arrest. He had to make it farther.

As if it didn't care about his woes, Leonard's stomach rumbled. Sighing, Leonard decided he would have to do his detective work the very old-fashioned way. There was a diner two blocks down from his motel. Maybe there, while he ate his one allowanced meal a day, he could catch the name and whereabouts of the kid who was meant to drown in a lake but didn't.

* * *

The diner was quieter than expected for a mid-afternoon. Leonard found himself sipping black coffee at a counter beside a man who was his deceased grandfather's age. It had been his luck to strike up an easy conversation, or the poor guy was just lonely. Now Leonard was listening very attentively to a story about a pretty thing called Winona Anne Davis and decided luck and loneliness had nothing to do with it. There was a faint sensation that drew goosebumps along his arms and made him feel as if something deeper, unfathomable, was at work.

The story did nothing to soothe his fancy.

"She and Franklin—that's her older brother—never did get along well, but after her son had his accident, things were worse than ever. Everybody knew she blamed the Sheriff for it."

"The sheriff or Franklin?" Leonard questioned.

"Both, or one and the same. However you choose to look at it, son." The man scooted his mug closer to the edge of the counter, and Leonard obligingly hailed the waitress to give them refills. "See, little Jamey... Was that his name?"

Leonard shrugged and mentally prayed half the things this guy told him were true and not just the product of senility.

"Well, Jamey was on a hunting trip with his uncle when it happened."

"You mean, when he fell in the lake."

The man blinked at him. "He fell in? That's not what I heard."

Leonard hurriedly said, "Never mind," because the story-teller tended to lose his train of thought easily. "So, I guess Winona left town."

The old man shook his head sadly. "It was best for the boy. People in this town... they don't do well with things they don't understand."

"Isn't everybody that way?" Leonard muttered at his own coffee.

"They said that something _evil_ must of touched his soul and that was why he was cursed."

Leonard's hands automatically tightened around the handle of his plain white ceramic mug. "Cursed?"

"Cursed. Afflicted bad," explained the story-teller. "Wouldn't no mutt come within a hundred yards of him. Animals can sense the supernatural, you know. FOX did a report on it once. Scientists made these special machines that read—"

"The kid—you were talking about Winona's kid."

"Oh, right. Little Jeremy. Like I said, he weren't right after that night down by the Spirit Lake. His mama had no choice but to find a special doctor for him, and even then nobody could figure out how to fix 'im. Soon enough, the townsfolk started acting like fools. Fear of the unknown does that to people. So she packed up and headed home."

Leonard leaned forward without meaning to. "Where's home?"

"Pretty little town, by the river." The man looked away and smiled at some distant memory. "Riverside. I met a girl during the war who was from there. She wore a yellow ribbon in her hair. Other girls had those short bobs, but not her." He breathed in deep and murmured: "'_Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod; with its crystal tide forever, flowing by the throne of God?_' That's by Robert Lowery, she said—the poet, not the actor."

"Riverside," Leonard repeated, rolling the word on his tongue, "Riverside." He reached out and squeezed the man's arm in gratitude. "My thanks."

The old man startled back to the present and looked down at Leonard's hand. Leonard looked down, too, bemused in that instant, and saw his mistake. The brand on his skin was ugly in the brightness of the daylight.

"Sorry," he began to apologize, because a Marked touching a common man without explicit permission was often misconstrued as a threat.

But to his surprise, the man simply covered Leonard's wrist with his own hand and gave him a friendly squeeze in return. "You're all right, son," he said to Leonard. "I hope in my going-on there was something of worth to you."

Leonard nodded. "There was, sir, probably more than you know." And with that, he paid for both their coffees and made his plans to hit the road.

* * *

Esterville wasn't a large town but at night the darkness made it seem like the whole of the earth. That was why its population tended to stay home after sunset, unless otherwise was required of them.

On a Thursday night, the town was particularly still, but for the occasional hurried passer-by and the meow of an alley cat. Within its small but carefully preserved downtown, a streetlamp cast a long shadow across a concrete sidewalk. The man who entered a building bearing the Town Library plaque seemed to cast a shadow that was longer.

"We close in five minutes," warned an attendant at the soft sound of an opening door, not looking up until the newcomer approached the front desk. His eyes grew round and nervous when he saw the clothes, the posture, and the granite face. "How can I help you... sir?"

A photograph was presented to the attendant. "Have you seen this man?"

The attendant shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I'm sorry."

"Is there anyone else here who might have encountered him?"

"Mm, just me. Ida, maybe. She works in Reference. Should—should I call her for you? I mean, it's late. She only works mornings because, you know, it gets dark and she's old and doesn't like—"

"That was quite informative, thank you" came the interruption, and the attendant shut up promptly. "It will not be necessary to contact her at this time. I will return in the morning."

"Yes, sir." But as the inquirer turned away, the young attendant blurted out, "Is, ah, he dangerous? The guy in the photo?"

It had to have been his imagination, the attendant would think later, that all the lights in the building flickered and dimmed as though their energy had been sucked right out of them. In any case, the electric bulbs jumped back to their rightful state a second later; he would just as quickly dismiss his unease.

"Is... he dangerous?" the question was repeated slowly, almost as if to ponder the matter was an exercise to be savored. The expressionless man's head tilted slightly. His answer was a simple, cold "Very."

The response left the attendant feeling extremely grateful he was not the unhappy face in the photograph because that poor soul, he decided, was about to meet a bad fate.

Outside the library, the tall, suited man drew a weathered journal from his coat and momentarily contemplated it. Once it was re-pocketed, he began to walk with apparent purpose, challenging the other sidewalk shadows with a formidable one of his own.


	6. Part Five

**Part Five**

Part of him drifted down the city sidewalk looking for something unfamiliar, something amiss. The rest of him, in the eyes of passers-by, trudged with the usual unfriendly gait, his mouth a flat line and eyes fixed firmly ahead. His entire aura was a clear warning to all to mind their own business before they even considered approaching him. Not that anyone had minded his business for a long time, except a select few—and in most cases, those few had not done so out of kindness.

James Tiberius Kirk didn't care. He was following an itch between his shoulder blades that worsened with each step he took. It led him unerringly to a small shop he only frequented when necessary, when restless sleep dwindled to no sleep at all and, despite the number of times he blinked or shook his head, his nightmare stood placidly in the corner of his bedroom, watching him.

"You're back," the owner said as a bell above the shop door announced his entrance. Her tone of voice was neutral. Him being there meant profit for her.

Jim grunted.

The woman understood his grunt was more of demand for _where is it?_ than hello. "I ought to have known," she muttered, but left her station at a long wooden counter and slipped around one of the cluttered towers of junk taking up space in her store. After a moment she came back with a figurine that fit snugly in the palm of her hand. She set it down in front of him without any care for how delicate it might be. "Guy who brought it in said it's an antique." Her look grew shrewd. "Fifty."

He knew the moment he picked up the tiny horse the woman was cheating him because it wasn't heavy enough to be anything but plastic. Closer inspection revealed the paint job was chipped badly around the hooves.

Still, he held the child's toy, a thing hardly worth shit, and the feeling between his shoulder blades subsided. Jim couldn't leave it behind, had to have it regardless of cost, and she had already known that about him.

He didn't give her a kind look when he dug two twenties and a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and laid them on the counter, and he didn't stay to take his receipt. The owner might have been laughing as the door swung shut behind him.

Clutching his latest purchase, Jim didn't look right or left as he strode back the way he'd come. He could feel eyes following him, curious glances and long, speculative stares. He was used to ignoring the attention he garnered, even as his ears caught some of the whispers which resulted from it.

"_Who's that man, mommy?_" a young voice chirped nearby.

"_Shhh. No one, sweetheart. No, don't look at him. Just keep going._"

Invariably, the mother would cross the street to put him as far out of range of her child as possible, like they could be contaminated by proximity. Superstition always superseded reason, and nobody had ever judged him reasonably.

Strange man, the townspeople of Riverside thought when they saw him. Eccentric.

Jim was no fool. Eccentric was the polite version of crazy.

But these normal people, these ordinary men and women who had never had anything extraordinary happen to them, didn't know Jim well enough. They did not know the things about him which really mattered.

His fingers tightened around the miniature horse, its sharp edges cutting deeper into his flesh.

What mattered was what he held, he reminded himself. Everything—and everyone—else could go to hell.

* * *

Leonard McCoy drove into the outskirts of Riverside, Iowa under the stony eye of a full moon with the expectation he was skirting a lot of trouble. Subsequently, he was run off the road.

The sudden appearance of something indistinct but large and unnaturally luminescent gave him hardly any time to react. He swerved sideways toward a ditch, almost went over it, and afterward was left stunned and shaking inside his idling vehicle. Once he had enough presence of mind to pry his stiff fingers off the steering wheel and open his eyes, he found himself suspended by his seatbelt, the nose of his car firmly pointed at the ground. Climbing out proved to be awkward.

Although he was unhurt (his gift told him that much), Leonard rotated his limbs with careful motions and tested them with body weight. His muscles refused to stop trembling but he figured that was par for the course after being in an accident. It would take a while for the shock to subside. Overall, that seemed a small price to pay to still have his life.

Leonard left the ditch and stood silently by the road. The refracted light from his car's headlamps was too entangled with the weeds to reveal much of the landscape. Not that there was much to see, he thought to himself as his eyes adjusted. Trees crowded on either side of the highway, bringing a darkness even moonlight could not ease.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.

Whatever had dashed in front of his car was long gone. Had it leapt into the woods? But there was no sound from the tree line, no rustling leaves or snapping branches animals caused as they passed through the underbrush.

Leonard realized then he had no idea what he had come close to hitting. There was not an impression left upon the back of his eyelids beyond a strange, empty brightness. He didn't know what that meant, but also conceded he wasn't in the frame of mind to contemplate the different possibilities. He turned his attention to his car stuck halfway in the ditch.

"How the fuck am I going to get you out of there?"

The answer was obvious: he couldn't by himself. Nor could he or should he hitchhike in the middle of the night in an unpopulated area to find help. That was asking for trouble, or more of it, as was dialing the highway patrol.

Dropping to the edge of the ditch, Leonard braced his head in his hands. It would be several hours until dawn, and the last of his gas station coffee was leaking into the car stereo. Really, this wasn't the best moment in the most important mission of his life. He supposed he would have to see what else came his way.

In the end, he donned his jacket for warmth (it was unseasonably cold to him but maybe not for Iowa; Leonard didn't know their weather patterns) and propped himself against the side of his car to wait. The crickets and bullfrogs kept him company. Once in a while, there was an ululation from the woods. A bobcat, he convinced himself, but shivered each time he heard it.

* * *

Man was everywhere. He was a stain on the earth, and the reason the air reeked of iron and copper. But he fed the magic, and the magic wanted feeding, badly.

So long, so long—the waiting could not go on.

Magic lifted its head and cried out, having seen a Man through its mismatched eyes, first through the blue, then through the green.

* * *

Leonard was startled to consciousness when the ground began to tremble beneath him. Though his brain was tired, it made the immediate connection. Jumping to his feet, he stood by the road and waved his arms to hail the eighteen-wheeler.

It didn't slow down, spewing gravel and dirt in its wake. Leonard dragged an arm across his eyes and cursed.

Sunrise was less than three hours away. He had hoped he would be in a motel bed by then but apparently no one in this region looked kindly upon a stranger lurking by a ditch and a wrecked car. If anything, it seemed his luck had gotten worse since he crashed.

He lifted his gaze up to the night sky and eyed the heavy clouds crawling across the moon. The air smelled metallic as usually did before a thunderstorm.

Rain. Wasn't that going to be fucking lovely?

At least he hadn't locked himself out of his only shelter. He jerked open the door to the car's backseat and crawled inside. He had to brace his shins against the back of the driver's seat to keep from sliding into the floorboard. Drawing a cigarette and his lighter out of his pocket, he smoked with the door wide open. It kept him occupied for all of five minutes before he crushed the leftover butt between the calluses of his forefinger and thumb and tossed it outside. Leonard half-hoped somebody would show up to arrest him for littering.

An agonizing twenty minutes later, the skyline lit up again, headlights approaching from a distance. Leonard sat in his car, watching the light grow closer, listening to the whine of an engine. He thought about moving, but raindrops had just started to hit the windows. Likely, it was just another asshole who would keep going, he thought. Now that there would be mud puddles from the rain, the least he could do was save his clothes and himself the humiliation of getting splashed.

The car stopped.

Or rather, it was more accurate to say the car choked and gurgled and came to an abrupt halt as if it had died. The man who poked his head out of a rolled-down window had a wild beard hiding half a tanned face and a dark green ball cap tugged low over his eyes.

"What's this, then?" he called Leonard's way. "Had a bit of car trouble?"

"Accident," Leonard said, sliding out of the car to get a better look at the potential ride. "Deer."

The man nodded like that was all he really needed to hear. "They're plentiful this time of year, and you never see 'em coming until they're right in your way."

"Ain't that the truth," he drawled back, relieved but also oddly unsettled by the easy conversation. "I'm just glad I didn't actually hit it." He gestured at himself. "Otherwise I'd be in worse shape, I'm sure."

"Where're you coming from?"

Leonard had expected to be asked where he was headed. He didn't change his stance so as to remain non-threatening and shrugged carelessly. "From Illinois, actually."

"Well, welcome to Iowa."

"Yeah." Leonard allowed for a pause. "I saw a sign a ways back that said Riverside was a couple of miles ahead. I thought about walking but..." He shrugged again. "It's dark, and you know..." He trailed off.

The man in the ball cap grinned. His teeth were shockingly bright behind the beard. "Yeah. Predators."

The crickets and bullfrogs went silent. Leonard did the same.

The older style car which had been sitting in a low idle suddenly gave a low roar as if its driver had stepped on the gas pedal. The man who was at the wheel said to Leonard, in a rather good-natured tone, "Here're your options, kid. I can keep going and when I hit the next town, I'll give a call to the police and let 'em know where to find you—"

Leonard didn't move because there was something in the man's face that dared him to do exactly that.

"—or you can ride with me into town yourself, and your business stays your business."

"Is that a threat?"

"In this day and age, most people don't get stranded unless they're out of options to help themselves. You've got a cell phone, don't you?"

He didn't answer that.

"See," the man said, "knew I was right."

Leonard laid one of his hands against the cool metal of his car, feeling his heart rate increase and not liking it. "Listen, mister, while I appreciate you stopping... I think you should move on."

"Have I scared you?" The man barked out a laugh. "My apologies. I didn't mean to." When the chuckle died, he added, "But you ought to take me up on my offer."

Leonard replied tightly, "No, thanks."

Why did he have to attract the county psycho? And why was the tire iron locked in the damn trunk? Stupid, Leonard, stupid!

Just as he'd feared, said psycho hummed under his breath and opened his car door.

Shit, shit, shit!

Leonard clutched hard at the lighter in his right hand, prepared to fight or run or do both. The woods were looking more appealing by the second. He could get lost in there but at the same time lose his pursuer.

Psycho's hands went up in a gesture of _oh look, prey's already shitting itself, let's not frighten it further_. "You all right there? You look a little green."

"Get back in the car. I'm carryin'," Leonard warned him.

"So am I."

Oh _fuck_.

Leonard swallowed, set his feet shoulder-width apart, and felt a spark that might be an oncoming adrenaline rush. Run or fight?

The decision was made for him in the form of another pair of headlights. They lit up the far curve of the road from the opposite direction. Leonard saw his chance in that spilt second, didn't think too hard about it, and took off running headlong toward the newcomer.

"Hey!" came the unhappy cry from behind him. "Get back here!"

He heard a second pair of boots hit the asphalt, pound after him. Leonard found an extra burst of speed from the pure adrenaline now pumping full-force through his veins and let his long legs eat up the distance. The second car came into full view; it was dark enough in color to blend in with the nighttime except for the way the moon was reflected on its hood. Whoever was driving saw Leonard, or saw something human-shaped running at the car. It car slowed down, braking to a stop some yards away.

Leonard pushed himself to cover that last bit of distance as quickly as he could. _He would make it, he would make it, he would—_

The driver got out.

Leonard noticed the trench coat first, a plain tie peeking underneath. Then he saw the dark hair and the face made of unforgiving angles. He pulled up short in horror.

Spock stared back, saying nothing, giving nothing away in his expression or his eyes. His fingers, however, clenched around the frame of the car door. Since Leonard couldn't make sense of much in the dark, he imagined the knuckles had turned white with suppressed rage.

It was only when Spock's gaze shifted past Leonard that the spell broke between them. Leonard remembered he was supposed to breathe. Ironically, he couldn't take in enough air.

Spock spoke with a deadly calm as he pushed aside the flap of his coat to reveal a holster strap. "Drop the weapon."

Leonard almost laughed, knowing it must be panic that was causing his hands to shake. Gun, what fucking gun? Like Spock needed that excuse...

Then he heard the gun being cocked behind him and the words that followed it: "No can do... _Fed_."

Spock took aim with his own handgun from behind the car door.

Leonard immediately skittered to the side, because he had no idea what was happening (except for the fact he was fairly certain Spock wanted to _murder_ him), but the muzzle of Spock's weapon didn't follow him. As he turned, he caught a glimpse of his crazy would-be assailant in the ball cap. The man was grinning behind his bushy beard and bearing a shotgun across the crook of his arm.

Where the hell had he pulled _that_ from?

Spock's eyes narrowed. "Drop the weapon, sir."

Leonard shuffled back a little farther from the stand-off, swallowing his next curse, and took a moment to delineate his odds. When he focused on Spock, he observed with some surprise that the frenetic, dark energy was missing. Spock was ordinary—or as ordinary as federal agents generally were.

But the other guy was not ordinary. Leonard was pretty sure the eyes of a normal man didn't glow that vividly in the dark.

Leonard's scrutiny did not go unnoticed. "So what's it gonna be now?"

It took Leonard a second to realize _he_ was being asked that question. "What?"

The man had a toothy grin. He didn't once take his eyes off Spock, even when speaking to somebody else. "Do you want a ride or not, kid?"

If this was a dream, it was the worst dream ever. But Leonard knew there wasn't any point in pinching himself. He had never felt wider awake.

A sense of expectation filled the air. Leonard had to give an answer—so he gave the only one that made sense when Spock was a permanent fixture in the corner of his eye. "Yeah," he agreed, if cautiously, "I want the ride."

Beard Guy stopped smiling then. Spock hadn't been smiling to begin with. Leonard wondered of the two who was going to die first. He figured it was a given he would be the second person to die, at any rate.

"Good choice."

The man must have moved, then, but Leonard didn't see it happen. In the next second Leonard was looking down the barrel of the shotgun.

For some reason, the line of Spock's mouth pressed flatter.

"Here's how this'll go, Fed," Spock's target announced. "You can kill me, but I'll kill him too and then you'll be out all the fun of making this bastard beg for his life—unless, of course, you don't care how he dies. Then be my guest and shoot him first. I won't even take advantage of the moment."

Spock said nothing. For his part, Leonard couldn't think of anything to say. He doubted he was capable of it anyway. His mouth was desert-dry.

"Okay then. You made your choice. Smart. Kid, scoot this way." It took longer than it normally would for Leonard's legs to obey. Leonard was urged, "A little faster now, if you please."

When Leonard was within an arm's length, he was positioned in front of the man as a human shield. This is how it works in hostage situations, his mind readily supplied. Sweat slid down the side of Leonard's face; more of it made its way down between his shoulder blades and stained the shirt under his arms.

It seemed important to say, "This is fuckin' great."

Only with his luck would he end up with a gun digging in his side and the son of the man he supposedly killed watching his every move with the intensity of a hawk tracking a field mouse. And for reasons unknown, Spock hadn't shot him yet, which in and of itself was insane.

Leonard didn't think things could get any worse—until, that is, his captor started to lead him backwards.

"Don't drag your feet," he ordered Leonard.

Leonard did his best to comply, though he did stumble once or twice. Spock, for some reason, left the protection of his car door to follow their progress down the road. In the interim, the agent had lowered and re-holstered his gun. His stoic expression was the one thing which remained unchanged. It made him that much eerier where the light touched his face.

Finally, they reached the car Leonard had had reservations about getting into in the first place. By that point, he had tried to convince himself this was rather a smart plan to get away from Spock, except that it hinged on Spock not wanting somebody to shoot Leonard besides himself. Leonard decided not to focus on that part too much or for too long because the more he thought about it, the more confused he became.

He got into the car without being told. Seconds later, the driver-side door swung open and his partner-in-crime climbed in.

"Well, that was fun." The man smirked, then unexpectedly leaned back out of the open door, leveled the shotgun and took aim.

Leonard shouted, "No!" without thinking and leapt over the gear stick. But he was too late. The gun went off with a loud _crack_, followed by a softer _pop_.

"Fuck!" Leonard twisted around to see out the rear window, almost afraid of what he would find.

Miraculously Spock was still on his feet, a monolith in the dark. Leonard's gaze discovered the real victim: a tire of Spock's car. He stared at it, disbelieving.

The driver-side door was pulled shut and the shotgun tucked away by the man's feet. "Time to roll!" the tire-killer announced, then threw the car out of park. They shot forward down the highway, Spock quickly becoming a figure in the distance.

For a long time, Leonard didn't know what to say and so let silence do the speaking for him. The engine gunned, then after a mile took to rattling and wheezing before it leveled out again. After Leonard guessed they had traveled at least five miles, his probable axe-murderer—and ironically his savior—reached out to flip on a black radio fixated atop the dashboard. Its speaker spat out static and the occasional voice, which relayed orders in code.

"Police scanner," Leonard named the device, startled to hear himself.

"Yup," agreed his companion. "Some trucker called in your locale about thirty minutes ago. Since I was in the area, I figured I ought to check it out." He glanced sidelong at Leonard as he drove. "Breathe easy, McCoy. Open the glove box. Have a drink. You look like shit."

Leonard tugged at the glove box without thinking and removed a flask. He uncapped it and took a healthy swallow of its contents. The liquor was fouler than what he was used to.

It was only after he savored the burn of alcohol in his gut that Leonard turned cold. The flask fell out of numb fingers to the seat beside him. "My name—how did you know my name?"

"There're things I just know," the man remarked. "More importantly, be glad it's me who saw you first. You were shining like a damn beacon out there. Something a lot less friendly could have found you before the sun came up." There was a short pause. "You're shaking, kid. Because of the Fed—or me?"

"Both," Leonard admitted.

"Then you can stop on my account—scout's honor." Even in the dim lighting of the car, Leonard could see the amusement on the guy's face. "It's true I was out hunting, but not for the likes of you."

Leonard felt clammy, stretched-thin. His stomach didn't seem to like the liquor after all. _Spock_, the name came to him mindlessly. He saw again the gun in Spock's hands, not pointed at him. Those hands had been remarkably steady.

Vaguely Leonard wondered why his voice sounded so far away when he spoke. "Who were you hunting for?"

"Not who. What." A low chuckle. "Instead there was you, sitting smack-dab in the middle of prime territory."

"I'm not sure I understand." Leonard blinked; his vision had doubled.

"You will eventually. Hey, it's all right." A hand crossed the distance between them and pressed on Leonard's forehead until the back of his head connected with the seat. "You just take a little nap."

Leonard struggled to find words. "Y-You..." He recalled the bitter taste on his tongue. "...drugged...?"

"Sorry," apologized the man, who hadn't even offered a name and who didn't sound sorry at all. "Don't worry, though. If I wanted you dead, I would have left you with your Fed friend." Then he laughed and kept on laughing like he had told the world's funniest joke.

Leonard's hearing began to fade in and out. His head was too heavy to hold up; he let it slump to the side. Something buzzed nearby, like a gnat.

But it wasn't a gnat, not at all. A phone, he recognized through a haze. The call was answered by the guy at the wheel, who somehow could talk and laugh in the same breath.

"_Decker here. Chris! About damn time you called!_"

No, no. Chris? It couldn't be. Christine was with Joanna, and Joanna—dear god, Joanna—

What was Leonard doing, drugged up to the gills in a psychopath's car while his daughter's time was running out? But his body wouldn't move. His fingers barely even twitched.

"_...won't believe what I found._" Another staccato burst of laughter. "_...might get us what we need after all...that son of a bitch...get it next time..._"

Leonard moaned.

"_...who? Oh, him. No, kid's fine...small dose...aye-aye, captain...in an hour, 'til then._"

Leonard didn't want to hear anymore, didn't want to think, so he gave up. He was as good as dead anyway, like his girl. He should have told Spock to go ahead and shoot him.

Thankfully, at that point, the world went away completely.

* * *

In his dream, wind rushed through trees. The wood was red, the leaves black, and something pale flowed down—

Water.

It was the color of clover that grew wild by the roadside. Where it puddled, tendrils of smoke rose. If he stayed asleep, that smoke would take a shape, eyes and ears and a long snout. It would breathe a coldness that smelled like death.

Far, far away, on the other side of the trees, someone screamed. Metal crashed. He tasted gunpowder.

Jim snapped awake.

At first he was certain the creature had already escaped, was in fact looking down at him, but the misty white vision of its face dispelled. He sat up.

He was unclothed. His feet and lower legs were dirty as if he'd been running through mud. He didn't turn his hands over to inspect them. He knew what they would look like. Silently, he slipped from his bed and padded to the bathroom.

There, he washed off the blood.


	7. Part Six

**Part Six**

"Still pissed?" The man asking didn't seem particularly upset about the notion that Leonard might be.

To make the point that he was in fact still pissed (beyond that, actually), Leonard continued staring silently through the windowpane at the morning fog. He had never seen the fog so thick. If he got loose, got away, Decker would never find him. The asshole deserved to run face-first into a tree.

Said asshole behind Leonard laughed, a thing the man seemed extremely fond of doing. Leonard was certain now it meant the guy was genuinely insane.

"Don't bother," Decker told him. "By the time I did catch up to you, you'd probably be dead or worse."

"What're you, a mind-reader now?"

"I'm just sayin'... there are bad things beyond these walls, Mr. McCoy. You'd be smarter to stay with me."

"Yeah well, fuck you."

Decker (_Matt_, the man had named himself but Leonard didn't want to pretend to be friends with the person holding him hostage) came to stand beside Leonard's chair. His eyes glowed.

Leonard met the reflection of those eyes in the glass, unnerved and also fairly certain he shouldn't look into Decker's gaze directly like how a man wasn't supposed to look into the sun. "If you would give me some clue why you won't let me go, I might try to be understanding."

"No you wouldn't."

Leonard snorted because that was more than true. He didn't want to be understanding. He wanted to get the hell away from this backwoods cabin. It was small and dank, and the door looked damn flimsy to be the only thing between them and one of Decker's 'monsters.'

Not that Leonard believed there were monsters in these parts, other than the guy at his back. He asked almost plaintively, "When's that friend of yours get here?"

"I thought you had an aversion to me and my friends."

"From where I'm sitting, if I have to pick between you assholes, the guy I don't know seems like the saner choice."

Decker's teeth were a flash of white behind his beard. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"You would," Leonard retorted. He rattled the handcuffs binding him to his chair. "How about removing one of these?"

"You look like you know how to pick a lock... so, no. Better for you to stay there until Chris gets a good look at you."

"Of course. And I get a bullet in the head if he doesn't like what he sees."

Decker shrugged.

Leonard cursed under his breath and glared at the faint line of trees he could barely see through the fog. He could have been in Riverside hours ago. Instead his car was in a ditch, he had up-close and personal confirmation Spock was on his tail, and now he was a kidnap victim.

"If I had my own gun," he snarled, "I'd find that fucking deer and shoot it between the eyes. This is some bullshit!" Angrily he jerked at the handcuffs; the metal didn't give in the slightest, nor did the wood of the chair.

Decker started to say something, perhaps an insistence concerning the 'deer', but they both heard the distant slam of a car door. In the next instant Decker had a shotgun lifted to his shoulder, cocked, and trained on the cabin door.

Leonard twisted around as best he could, both to see the door and Decker, demanding, "Where the hell does that thing come from?"

"Keep your mouth shut," Decker warned him, "otherwise I can't concentrate."

Leonard's heart rate decided to increase on its own. He swallowed so his mouth wouldn't seem so dry. "It's probably the guy you said was coming over."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

_Please don't shoot anyone_, Leonard thought, feeling sick all of a sudden. _Please, please don't shoot anyone._ He didn't think he could stomach seeing someone's brains all over the wall. That was the kind of thing he couldn't fix.

A pair of footsteps stopped just outside on what Leonard assumed was a porch; because the sun was rising on that side of the cabin, the legs of the newcomer cast a shadow under the door. The silence in the room grew thick.

On a nearby table, Decker's cell phone rang. The man slowly shuffled in that direction but never took his line of sight down the barrel of his gun from the door. He squatted slightly and hit the Answer button with the tip of his elbow.

A voice said, "_Are you going to shoot me or let me in?_"

"Thinking about both."

Leonard wasn't certain if that was possible but he wisely held his tongue.

"_Open the door, Matt._" That seemed partly command and partly exasperation.

Decker stayed silent for some seconds before relenting. "Fine, but I'll give you fair warning—whether you're my good pal or some fucker wearing his face, I can and will kill you." Then he lowered his gun and went to the door.

Rather than opening it as Leonard expected, Decker stood in front of it and muttered something. A second later the knob turned, the door opened, and sunlight cut into the gloom of the cabin's interior.

"Goddamn," Leonard said, staring at the back of Decker's head. "Please tell me you aren't a witch."

"He's not," replied the man who had stepped inside.

"Though I did have the opportunity to become the familiar of one," Decker cut in, smirking. He tapped the side of the shotgun's muzzle against the newcomer's chest. "What's the secret password?"

"There is no secret password, and you already broke the ward." The man, amused if the look in his eyes was anything to go by, was taller than Decker by a few inches, leaner, and older. Despite that he sported a peppering of grey at his temples, Leonard had the impression the fellow still had sharp reflexes, enough to defend himself against any attack Decker might make. Leonard couldn't decide if that made him feel better or worse.

The man pushed the shotgun away from his person and strode toward Leonard by the window. He introduced himself as Christopher Pike. "You're McCoy," he said.

"What I am is cuffed to a fucking chair," Leonard growled.

Wordlessly Pike pulled a switchblade out of a pants pocket and flipped it open. Leonard's stomach did a flip of its own. But in the next minute, Pike had used with the knife's tip to jimmy open both of Leonard's handcuffs, saying by way of explanation, "He always loses the key."

Leonard rubbed at his sore wrists and eyed the man who had freed him. "Is this the point where you expect me to run? So you can hunt me down and skin me alive or some shit like that?"

"Is it?" asked Pike in return, tone mild. Even his eyes looked calm.

Decker's just looked crazy, especially since Leonard was now free to move about. "Seriously, I'm getting bored here. And confused. Why would you let him go before we question him?"

"About what?" demanded Leonard. "I don't even know who you two goobers are, let alone what you want from me!"

"Matt, you need to shut up for a minute. Don't listen to anything he says, McCoy."

Leonard muttered, "I've tried not to."

"Now…" continues Christopher Pike, dragging another chair over toward Leonard's so they are sitting face-to-face. "I do have some questions for you. Here's one that should be easy: may I call you by your first name? You can call me by mine. Chris, not Christopher, please."

Leonard bared his teeth in what might, vaguely, pass for a pleasant smile. "Sure. Call me _Karl_."

Pike sat back in his chair, amused. "Okay... Karl." Then he drew a piece of paper from the inside of his jacket, unfolded it, and lifted it for Leonard to see. "But I have to wonder... maybe the authorities spelled your name wrong?"

Leonard stared at the Wanted poster bearing his face. "Damn." He looked at Pike. "How long has that been circulating?"

"In these parts? About a month." Pike tucked the paper back into his jacket. "Let's start again. Hi, I'm Chris."

Leonard grimaced. "McCoy... Leonard McCoy."

"From Mississippi?"

"Sometimes. I'm on the road a lot."

Pike crossed his arms, and Decker drifted to stand at the man's back, shotgun tucked in the crook of his arm. He didn't say anything but he grinned. Leonard was well and truly beginning to hate the bastard.

"From what we know, Leonard, you've been on the road for a while. Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois—visiting a lot of lake towns and reserves."

At first, Leonard thought they had found his research and his map but then he remembered he left it in the car by the roadside. "How do you know that?"

"We're hunters, Mr. McCoy, and no matter how the government feels about what we do, our network crisscrosses theirs. If you're on their radar, you end up on ours too." He smiled, and this time Leonard saw nothing friendly in it.

Leonard let his disgust hide the apprehension in his voice. "You're allied with the Feds?"

"Oh, no," interrupted Decker too cheerfully, "we hate those pig-bastards. We shoot them in the face."

"Matt, I said no talking—or I'll shoot _you_ in the face."

Decker rolled his shoulders like he was looking forward to that scuffle. He stage-whispered to Leonard, "He hides a Magnum in his left boot. Twenty-two caliber. It's quaint."

Indicating Loony Bin with an incline of his head, Leonard asked Pike, "He's not human, is he?"

"Mostly," Pike said, "but never when it counts."

"Fellas, I already know what makes me special." Decker's eyes glinted at Leonard. "I'm more interested in why _he_ is. I told you, Chris, he was lit up like a Central Park Christmas tree."

Leonard tried to make sense of that. "I don't 'light up', you ugly bastard. That was probably my car, or—" He bit off the rest of that sentence, thinking about the thing which had run him off the highway in the first place. It wasn't a deer, but these assholes didn't have to know that.

"Or what?" Leonard was asked. Pike gave him this look like the man had caught an inkling of what he'd been thinking.

Leonard glared at them. "Or hell if I know! A meteor in the sky, or a goddamn spaceship! Why don't you goons make sense for once?"

"Name-calling will get you nowhere, Leonard."

"Except a hole in the ground," added Pike's partner.

Leonard jumped to his feet. "Fuck both of you!"

Pike sighed and leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers. "Listen, you seem like a decent guy. I can give you two more chances to be cooperative. After that, I will start breaking your fingers, then your arms, so on and so forth. There are more than enough bones in the human body that we could play this game for quite a while." He stopped as if the pause was to allow Leonard to consider the options. "I'll be honest with you, son... I don't have a taste for torture like I did in my younger years but I _can_ do, and I will, because there are things at stake here that matter more to me than your life."

Knees weak, Leonard sat back down. "You're not very comforting here, Chris."

"I never intended to be comforting. I want answers, and you have them. You want your life, and I can give you that. Fair trade."

Leonard mulled over the possibility that he could make it to the door without a bullet in his back. It didn't seem likely. At length he said, "The first time your certified friend over there said I shone like a beacon I didn't know what he meant, and I still don't. It's true I have… power but—"

"The Mark on you tells me that. What don't I know?"

"—but that doesn't turn me into a goddamn glow stick, except maybe to another person who knows magic." He sucked in a breath and wanted to smack his forehead for being so dumb. "Which, of course, _he has_."

Decker tugged his ball cap low over his eyes and started grinning again.

"You said you weren't a witch!" Leonard accused.

"He's not," Pike repeated.

"Well he sure as hell ain't a mage. I'd feel it, so that leaves only the idiots who _ask_ for power, like life isn't already fucked up enough for those who are born with it! " He focused his attention on Decker. "My god, man, find yourself a house, a wife, and a picket fence. You fuck with magic, it fucks right back with you. They teach that shit in kindergarten these days."

Pike's shoulders were shaking. Leonard realized when Pike pressed his knuckles to his mouth, he was laughing.

"It's not funny," he said, indignant. "My life has been a shithole since I was seven."

Pike's shoulders shook one last time. Then he lifted his head and held out his arm, drawing back his jacket sleeve.

Leonard stared at the scar-tissue on Pike's wrist for a long time before it made sense to him.

"I understand a lot better than you think I do," the man said. He withdrew his arm and covered his wrist again. "Matt, tell him what you were hunting last night."

Oddly, the mirth in Decker's expression melted away. His grip on his gun tightened, and Leonard had a second to fear somebody was about to get shot.

"There's a... spirit. It looks like a man but it doesn't speak like a man. You could walk past it on the street and you'd never know what it truly was. It—it's been around a long time, on this earth. Too long." For a moment, the man almost seemed to sway in place, gaze turning glassy like he saw something far, far away no one else could. His voice dropped to a whisper. "It's going to start feeding again, Chris, I can feel it. You have to help me." The skin around Decker's eyes grew taut. He closed his eyes as his voice rose again. "Help me stop it!"

Watching Decker on the cusp of some kind of madness, Leonard could only think to ask, "Does it drown its victims?"

Decker's eyes flew open when he said that—and there was nothing remotely human in them.

"NO!" Pike shouted half a second before Decker jerked the shotgun into position and fired at Leonard.

Leonard had dived for the floor the moment he saw Decker in all his mad glory, thinking, _too late, too late, shit, too late!_ Something exploded over his head in the wake of the roar of the gun and rained down upon his head. He kept his face pressed against the floor, waiting for pain, for blackness or whatever it was that came hand-in-hand with death. He heard Pike shout again, maybe Decker's first name or the beginning of a spell, but didn't dare get himself involved.

There came a crack not dissimilar to a gunshot, and a body fell hard onto the floor beside him. It was Decker. The man curled onto his side like a child, clutching at his head and whining in his throat.

"Shit," Leonard heard. Then Leonard was hauled up by the back of his shirt to his feet.

"Consider yourself lucky," Pike said, his face pained and furious. "Now get outside, and stay out while I bind him."

Leonard didn't have to be told twice. He stumbled for the door, pushed out into the innocuously warm sunshine that seeped through the lifting fog, and held onto the porch railing as he threw up in the yard. Once he had gotten down to the bile in his stomach, his heaving stopped and he went for the truck parked by Decker's car.

He was tugging fruitlessly at the door handle of the locked door, feeling fuzzy with shock, before it dawned on him what he was trying to steal. Leonard's hands fell away from the truck and he took a full step back.

"What the _hell_," he said, voice strained, staring at the emblem painted on the side. The words below it read: County Sheriff.

It was only then Leonard realized he had somehow landed himself in the mother of all clusterfucks.

* * *

Pike exited the cabin alone. When he saw Leonard sitting on the ground, leaning against one of his truck's tires, he said, "You didn't run. You're smart after all."

Leonard threw a weed he had plucked up and twisted between his fingers aside. "What good would that have done? You probably know these roads like the back of your hand. You or one of your boys would have picked me up within an hour... _Sheriff_."

"Very smart. Good." Pike nodded approvingly. He unlocked his vehicle. "Get in."

"Where am I going? Jail?"

"Give me some credit, Leonard. That would be a waste of my time and yours. I'm taking you to your car."

Rocking back on his heels, Leonard eyed the man. "Why?"

"When we get there, I think you'll know."

Leonard looked around, like there might be another way out, but he knew there wasn't. So he climbed in from the passenger-side and buckled himself into the seat. Pike took a moment to change his non-descript jacket for one bearing a badge and fixed a holstered weapon he removed from his glove box to the belt around his waist. Leonard watched all of this without a word, wondering if he hadn't fallen asleep or maybe died after all. It felt damn weird to him, surreal even.

Pike started the engine, and they left the cabin behind, finally turning from a long dirt road onto a newly paved highway.

Leonard let the silence in the truck cabin stretch until he couldn't stand it anymore. "So how does a Marked become a county sheriff?"

Pike turned the radio dial until the rock station became one that played the Golden Oldies. "He doesn't. That burn on my wrist tracks all the way up my arm. The result of an accident, you understand. To most people, I'm just a man with a scar, not a Mark."

"How?"

"It's a long story."

"Apparently I have time."

Pike huffed, amused. "My ability was discovered when I was in my teens. Back then, it was just the start of the movement against our kind, one that had been building up since the end of the world war. There was incontrovertible proof we existed and it was public, so the government asked itself, 'how do we make certain that we can tell who these people are?' They came up with the Mark. It was a brand on the skin, like a tattoo. They just rounded us up—old and young—by the handfuls if they could. Some people got it who didn't even know what magic was. It was meant to placate the non-mages who had begun to fear us."

Pike paused, then chuckled. "But their record-keeping sucked. So you could disappear if you knew how, or knew someone who could help you. Unfortunately by the time the next generation came along, yours that is, the government had figured out how they wanted to segregate us from the masses. They stripped our civil rights out of the law and created a body of governance just for one purpose: to watch, contain and, if need be, kill us."

He shook his head. "Every day it worsens like a disease. Children get trackers in their skin. The ones with strong abilities are taken from their families, institutionalized, re-educated. And with the digitalization of all personal information nowadays, the database on us has to have a million copies in a million places, and it's always growing. Once you're in the system, you can't get out."

Leonard said nothing. There was nothing to say. He imagined his own child having even less freedom than he did. He thought of her locked away and drugged. It hurt him beyond words. It angered him, too.

When Pike spoke again, his tone of voice reflected a somber mood. "When I said I could give you your life, Leonard, I was serious. It wouldn't be easy but there is a chance yet for you to have something... normal."

"But?" Leonard pressed, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

"You have to earn it."

"Of course," he said bitterly. "Nothing's free."

"No, there isn't," Pike agreed matter-of-factly, one hand steady on the steering wheel. "So a man has to know his limits. He has to know what he's willing to pay, how far he's willing to go for what he wants. Tell me about Joanna."

Leonard forgot how to breathe. His fingers dug into the hard fabric of his seatbelt.

"You think about her often," the man next to him went on to say, "and given the _way_ you think about her, I would have to guess she's your child."

"You bastard." Leonard turned to look at the sheriff in horrified realization. "You're the mind-reader!"

Christopher Pike smiled.

"I don't fucking believe it! Stop the fucking car!" He jerked off his seatbelt. "There's no way in hell—" He stopped cold. "Shit. _Decker_. When you said you were going to bind him, you meant..." Leonard paled at the thought.

"He's not sane," Pike said affably, "but I need him—though I have a feeling maybe not as much as I am going to need you." He glanced at Leonard. "That look on your face is uncalled-for. I didn't break his mind. Mind-magic doesn't work like that, no matter what shit they write in the pamphlets these days."

"You're saying he's just off his rocker naturally? Bullshit."

"He was already in pieces when I met him. That thing he hunts so vigilantly? It lured his little brother to a watery grave while he watched, helpless to stop it."

Leonard almost allowed himself a moment of pity for the bastard. Almost. He argued, "He has magic."

"No, Matt carries an illusion of it. Whatever the creature was that he saw may have taken his mind but it left behind a resonance. That's what he follows, has been following for nearly two decades. And it's what makes him seem... like us. But he's not, Leonard."

"No, he's just your mind-puppet."

Pike barked out a laugh.

Leonard didn't see what was so funny. "It's inhumane."

"It's no different than keeping a leash on a murderer. I don't control him. I don't even trick him. I just keep what's left of his sanity from grinding away to dust and let him continue his mission. It's a thankless task, actually." Pike sobered. "But I do it because I want to find that thing as much as he does, possibly more."

Leonard refused to look at Pike, knowing he wanted to ask why but determined he wouldn't. At this point, it made no sense to involve himself in this hunter-thing. He had a difficult job to do as it was, and Joanna was counting on him to do it right.

"You said you'd take me to my car," he muttered, crossing his arms across his chest.

"I am. You'll see it in another mile or so. It got called into the station."

"By a Fed," Leonard guessed.

But Pike shook his head. "Believe it or not, your agent doesn't seem to be willing to bring attention to his whereabouts. So until he does want us to know where he is and what he's doing, I'm not kicking over that ant hill."

"That's good... I guess." Leonard said slowly, surprised. Did that mean Spock really was on an unsanctioned manhunt? And what was going to happen to Leonard when Spock finally caught him?

He was so lost in his confusion over that, he didn't notice where they were until Pike was pulling alongside a familiar stretch of ditch.

"Son of a bitch," said Leonard. "You kept your word."

"Surprise," echoed the sheriff dryly. As Leonard reached for the door handle, he added, "A word to the wise, Mr. McCoy: don't leave town too soon."

Leonard eyed him, wary. "What if I decide I don't want what you're offering?"

A corner of Pike's mouth tipped upward. "What if you decide you do?"

Leonard expelled an aggravated breath and threw open the passenger-side door. He didn't wait to see Pike drive off and instead stalked to his car. Someone had towed it out of the ditch for him. It sat cold and quiet, one of its headlights cracked; he walked around it but saw no indication of vandalism.

The doors were unlocked. Leonard got in and sat down, hand automatically searching the underside of the seat to find the spare key he had taped there. When his fingers closed around it, he felt inexplicable relief. The car engine turned over after two tries.

Yet it was a long time before he pulled onto the road. Riverside was close but, now, also dangerous. It had something like a curse of its own, and that curse was already wanting to hook into him. He could turn back, should turn back, but...

Pike was wrong. How could he decide when there was no choice to begin with?

Car pointed towards Riverside, Leonard drove on.


	8. Part Seven

**Part Seven**

That night (or day, or what was left of either) Leonard was released by his captors he pulled his car alongside a property that looked abandoned and slept fitfully. His body was still sparking from a long-ago adrenaline, from the memory of Decker's wild eyes and Pike's smooth talk. At last, when he could no longer pretend rest was within his grasp, he drove into Riverside's downtown and bought himself a cup of coffee.

The old brick buildings and quaint, hand-painted business signs were disheartening somehow. It seemed to Leonard if he scratched beneath the veneer of the small town he was likely to find only more small town. Granted, places like these often had more secrets than the big cities did, but nothing struck him as _abnormal_ from the start. In Esterville, and Manna, Illinois before that, he'd felt almost sick to his stomach as soon as he crossed their county lines. While making his way from Kentucky through Missouri, the same wrongness had been there even though it hadn't struck him as strongly, leaving him unsettled. In a way the varying levels made sense now because whatever dark magic had passed through the two states had been gone at least two decades or as long ago as five.

Riverside, as far as Leonard could tell, was free of the resonance completely. That was what bothered him most.

He found a small park bordering the southernmost street of the downtown area and wandered it, pondering what it would mean if Riverside, currently drowsing under a blanket of early grey fog, didn't have a past connected to the curse-maker he had been tracking. Had his search been doomed from the beginning because it was really the delusion of a desperate father?

He crushed his empty coffee cup in his hand and waited until a young jogger passed him on the sidewalk before meandering off the path. Between two trees, Leonard knelt to touch the ground. It was cold beneath his hand.

And silent.

_No earth magic, wrong or otherwise._

Strangely, Leonard pictured Spock as he had last seen the man: a tall, lean shadow in a trench coat standing in silence on a rain-soaked road. Did Spock know how the earth felt, how nature strengthened the very seams of the world, every place he went—as his father was rumored to have known? They were both so different for all that they had looked alike. Sarek had worn his power like a great cloak of many colors but in Spock it was muted. Why? Out of habit?

Did the agent's employers know who he really was?

Leonard imagined that they did. Worse yet, he imagined how they knew how to harness that power to their purpose. It would be hell, that was for certain.

He sat back on his heels with a slow, shocked inhale, thinking, _What the heck?_

Had he just felt _sorry_ for the guy trying to kill him?

"You are one giant idiot, Len," Leonard told himself and stood up, unnerved.

Pity kept him from taking advantage of every dumbass that crossed his path who wanted to see what a magic user could do. Compassion, on the other hand, was the most likely to get him killed. Until now, he thought he had stayed well out of that territory.

Raking a hand through his hair, Leonard started back the way he had come.

It was guilt—just guilt—that softened his perspective. Leonard had brought death to Sarek's doorstep. Albeit he had done so unknowingly, but still: that didn't make Spock's father any less dead. The man had a right to feel angry and wronged.

Leonard stopped in his tracks and resisted the urge to fist his hands and beat them against his head. What was the matter with him!

With a determination inherent in his family genes, Leonard forced out any remaining thoughts of the Fed. "Time to find the Davis woman," he declared to the morning air belligerently, as if it might be at fault for Spock's presence in his head.

The air didn't argue back.

* * *

The growl came from behind: "You're late."

Jim paused in his slinking around the edges of the bustling warehouse. He thought, _Fuck you_, then turned around and smiled to placate his boss.

Said boss eyed Jim's expression and spat to the side. "Third time this week, Kirk."

Jim hated it, absolutely hated it, when people maneuvered the conversation to where he was expected to reply, knowing well full what his limitations were. His fingers curled with a familiar anger but he kept it in check because while punching this asshole might be satisfying, it also meant he would be back to visiting the hell hole that was the local unemployment office. As things stood, there were too few opportunities left in Riverside that paid decently, or legally, and of those even fewer he could qualify for.

But oh, the temptation to hurt Ed was strong. What would the monster in him do? Render flesh from bone?

Jim chose instead to drop his gaze. It made him angrier to concede in that meek way but there was nothing else he could do.

Ed smirked but backed off, mollified and no doubt assuming he had given his employee the needed reminder that Jim was essentially a charity case for the company. "You're on Caterpillar in number nine."

Jim grimaced and started for the locker room. Of course. Relegation to freezer work was suitable punishment for tardiness. Only to assholes.

"Kirk!" Ed called not a moment later.

Several other workers stopped what they were doing to listen. Jim halted mid-stride, wiping his face clear of emotion in anticipation for the final jab. Ed Towler was the kind of guy who never stopped short of total humiliation.

"Late is still late. I'll expect to see you in the office before you clock out. You can _write down_ your excuse."

Jim heard a snicker to his left and lengthened his stride to carry him as quickly as possible from sight. It was going to be another fucking fantastic day at work, he could already tell. Once inside the men's locker room, he put his back to its other occupants and stripped off his jacket.

All these bastards would get what was coming to them, he promised himself, temper still at a simmer. And if that day didn't come soon, he would find a way to bring them the white horse. Let them experience firsthand how it felt to be ruined.

Pleased at that thought, Jim smiled thinly at his reflection in the row of dented lockers and zipped up his regulation overalls in preparation for the day's shift.

* * *

The County Sheriff's Department looked like shit from the outside, but it was serviceable enough within. Christopher Pike made a detour to the officers' lounge on his way to the small room that served as his private office. They had recently used part of the donations collected from their charity book sale (and hadn't that been a ridiculous affair?) to buy a Keurig machine. By most of his staff's standards, it was an extravagant, nearly illegal purchase. In that first week, no one had known what to do with themselves except stand around the coffee-maker, stroke it lovingly, and plot how they could hide the purchase from the auditors. Chris had been amused by the behavior.

He picked out a plain coffee packet and shoved it into place, then flipped the brew switch. When nothing happened, a bemused Chris slapped the side of the machine with the flat of his hand.

Not so much as a burble. He checked that it was plugged in, and it was.

"All right," the sheriff growled as he turned around. "Who broke it?"

The young woman on the other side of the lounge paused in her perusal of a vending machine's contents. "What was that, sir?"

"This damn thing isn't working!"

His deputy turned to look at it then him critically. "Did you press the start button, Chris?"

"Funny, Uhura," he told her flatly.

She shrugged and headed for the lounge door like a broken coffee-maker wasn't a serious affair, claiming breezily, "I think Hendorff did it."

Chris didn't know whether or not to believe her. Hendorff was certainly cursed around electronics (which is why he wasn't allowed to carry a taser anymore) but on the other hand, Deputy Uhura loathed her new partner.

Of course, to be fair, Nyota tended to loathe every person Pike partnered her with. He hadn't figured out yet why that was, but to be honest he didn't truly care. She was the least moronic of his deputies. So long as she didn't 'accidentally' shoot a co-worker in the line of duty, she could be displeased with whomever she wanted. He knew from skimming the edges of her mind the emotion was more of a ruse than true hatred anyway.

He returned his attention to the Keurig machine, accusing it, "You're just an expensive piece of shit, aren't you?" He delivered one last smack to its side because, in Pike's world, no morning coffee meant serious morning rage.

The machine hiccupped from the abuse and sputtered steam. Then coffee-colored water began to trickle into the cup positioned below its spout.

"Huh," said Chris, and tucked his hands into his pockets to wait. Ten seconds later, his cell phone buzzed against his fingers. He pulled it out and checked the number on the screen before answering, "Sheriff Pike here."

The man on the other end sounded dazed. "Chris? Hey, uh... I just... woke up?"

The poor fool. "Must've had a rough night. Come to think of it, you didn't look so good when I left." Matt wouldn't know if he did or not, and it was his fault he trusted Christopher not to lie to him.

"Yeah? Yeah, I guess so. My head feels... stuffy. Maybe it's the flu," Decker slurred. "Hey, where's McCoy?"

"I took care of it."

"I don't remember burying a body."

"Hardly," Chris said dryly, taking his now-full cup and sipping at it. "I told you we need him."

His newest deputy, a fresh-faced Academy graduate by the name of Stiles, entered the lounge.

"Look, I'm on the clock. We'll talk later."

"Wait, but where—?"

"Riverside," he answered shortly, voice low, "but don't go looking. Kid's already spooked." _That's an order_, he knew he didn't have to add.

"Then what the hell am I supposed to do?" Decker sounded petulant, like a boy deprived of his favorite toy.

The deputy glanced Pike's way in an antsy way. Chris said, "Go hunting." Then he hung up and zeroed in on his companion. "What?"

The young man perked up and shuffled in Chris's direction. "Hey, boss! I followed him, just like you said!"

"And?" Chris demanded, impatient.

"He had breakfast at the joint beside the hotel. Then he went out."

"Where?"

"I followed him as far as Downers Road before I was called to break up a domestic dispute."

Chris thought about that for a moment. "I know there's an old mill out there."

Deputy Stiles agreed, having lived in Riverside all of his life. "Sure, but the factory part is closed up. The warehouses got sold and turned into a distribution center for some big chain-store. That's a good thing, you know? Employs lots of folk, even though the economy's down."

"'Course," Chris said, clasping a hand to the young man's shoulder as he headed for the door. "Good job, son. Make sure to have a cup of coffee before you head back out."

Stiles' face lit up at the mention of the new coffee-maker. "Yes, sir!"

Chris smiled to himself outside the lounge, but that smile faded as he walked toward his office. Between Stiles' report and what Chris knew which made that warehouse operation off Downers Road significant, events were happening faster than he liked and not necessarily in a way that would end well. Soon, he wasn't going to have a choice in what he had do. It would mean he had to destroy the very person he once promised to protect.

If Winnie was watching him from the afterlife, he imagined she was going to be pissed.

* * *

Warehouse work had several downsides but there was one upside which was very important to Jim Kirk. His assignments were often quiet and solitary, and Jim preferred it that way—until his preference came back to bite him in the ass, that is.

Jim heard the red alarm go off above the door and had a split second to think that some jackass was locking him inside the freezer out of idiocy or maliciousness. He threw his Caterpillar into reverse. It protested this with a squeal of gears but still obeyed, backing down a long row of finished product which he had been organizing by lot number with a speed that rivaled newer models. Boxes spilled off the wooden pallet attached to Caterpillar's forks as they flew. At the last second, Jim jerked the steering wheel to the right and swung the forklift free of the row with a blare of his horn, then switched the machine into drive.

He almost ran over a man in his blind panic.

Jim let out an unintelligible shout of alarm and slammed on the brakes. Caterpillar skidded to a sudden stop, and the momentum threw Jim forward into the steering wheel. He clutched at it in silent pain, staring at the guy he had just about hit. For the briefest of moments, when their eyes connected, there was an angry buzzing in Jim's ears and a word in his throat.

He swallowed it down, released his death grip on the steering wheel and clambered down from the forklift.

At the same time, the stranger unfroze and stepped out of the path of the forklift to meet him. "Do you always drive so recklessly, Mr. Kirk?" he asked Jim.

Jim halted in the process of going forward to check if the man was all right, instantly wary that the person knew his name but he couldn't say the same. The stranger inclined his head ever-so-slightly as though he had heard what Jim was thinking.

"I am Mr. Spock. I was told where to find you by your supervisor, Mr. Towler." Mr. Spock turned to look behind him and added, tone oddly dry, "My escort seems to have disappeared."

Jim looked towards the open doorway as well. The clear plastic flaps which were meant to contain the cold air of the freezer were perfectly motionless. Jim narrowed his eyes and peeled off his hard hat.

It was probably Finnegan who had sent the man in here, sans safety gear, and set off the alarm, knowing how Jim would react. He would be back in the main building by now, laughing his ass off with friends who had a smaller IQ than he did.

The pranks were becoming more and more dangerous.

"Mr. Kirk?"

Jim returned his attention to his visitor, feeling a coating of shame that he couldn't apologize outright for nearly running the man down. He squared his shoulders and held out his hand.

Mr. Spock shook it briefly, like a person unused to and not comfortable with physical contact. That suited Jim fine. He didn't like touching people either. He had been an affectionate child, his mother had often reminded him, before his accident.

_Accident_. Jim's mouth twisted at the very word.

"You have a lunch break in six minutes."

Mr. Spock stated the fact like he knew Jim's schedule better than Jim did. It was disconcerting. Even more disconcerting, Jim thought, was the fact that Spock (for he couldn't refer to the man as a mister in his head) gave the distinct impression he intended to share that lunch break with Jim.

Even if Jim didn't agree to the company.

Jim ran his fingers through his hair which had flattened against his forehead and shoved his hard hat back into place. Then he gestured at Caterpillar and climbed on. Spock stepped around the side of the forklift, inspecting it with apparent distrust, before his eyes hooded slightly at the singular seat—which Jim was currently in.

Abruptly, he met Jim's gaze. "I am aware that you do not talk."

Jim didn't know what to make of that. After a moment, he patted the handle bar built into the side of the cabin. With an air of resignation, Spock removed his long coat and folded it over one arm. He stepped up onto the footpad and gripped the bar with both hands.

Jim gave him a quirk of the mouth which meant _hang on_.

Caterpillar might have been beyond her years but she still worked like a champ. Jim made a detour to set down the pallet in his current work area; then they were off. The moment the forklift took a left turn out of the freezer, Jim shuddered with relief at the onslaught of warmer air. He had his coat and work gloves on, both heavy enough to withstand serious Midwestern snow days, but after spending half a shift in one of the freezers, nothing could prevent the coldness which settled into a man's bones.

Technically no employee in inventory or shipping was supposed to spend more than an hour in a freezer at a time. Yet nobody ever pushed Jim to follow that rule. Jim didn't like to think too hard about why, especially given that his disability limited his options to call for help. With the same disregard he had been given the walkie-talkie he carried. The device made him look like every other worker but it was essentially a useless tool in his hands.

He took them through the tunnel that ran the length of the warehouse until it reached the main thoroughfare which branched out into various shipping docks. Spock had not said a word for the duration of their trip. He looked ill-at-ease hitching a ride on the side of a forklift.

Whatever reason the man had for seeking him out must be an important one, decided Jim, to forgo complaint.

They pulled into one of the only shipping docks Jim frequented with any sort of regularity. As expected, the door to a small office area hidden behind a large weight scale swung open upon his arrival, and a teenager bounded out with a cry of "Jim!"

The enthusiasm with which Pavel Chekov said his name almost made Jim smile. He put Caterpillar into park and turned her off but obviously not quick enough for Spock, who had been flat-footed on the ground and shrugging back into his coat before the forklift had rolled to a complete stop.

Jim jumped down beside the man and held out Caterpillar's keys to the bright-faced Pavel.

"It is time for food, _da?_" the teen said.

Pavel's Russian accent was thick enough to make only half of his question sound like English but Jim understood him well enough. Maybe he liked Pavel because they had that inability to communicate effectively in common. He nodded.

The teenager's attention transferred to Jim's guest, who looked out of place in his suit, tie, and polished shoes. "Who are you?" he asked, eyes wide with curiosity.

"I am Spock."

Jim wondered why Spock had dropped the formalities.

Chekov's eyes grew impossibly wider. "You are Government!"

The declaration was enough to startle Jim. He looked at Spock again, certain he couldn't have missed something so obvious.

Spock said, unperturbed, "Your assessment is correct. I am employed by United States federal government."

Jim felt his face heat. He pivoted on his heel and started to walk away.

What the fuck had he been thinking? Where had his sense gone? Since when did he automatically assume people seeking him out was a good thing?

_Government._

Bitterness rose in Kirk's throat.

What reason did Uncle Sam have to come after him? He'd been summarily rejected from enlistment in the Army because he was a mute. No, they wouldn't want him unless—

He saw red. It wasn't on his hands, but it was like a haze across his vision.

_He was no one's experiment._

All it took was for a hand catching Jim's arm to set him off. He turned around, fist flying, but found himself in the next instant face down on the ground, one arm twisted behind his back and a shoe planted into the curve of his spine.

"Calm down, Mr. Kirk," the Fed ordered.

Jim struggled until his arm threatened to pop out of its socket and the pain was overwhelming. Only then did he slap the concrete as a fighter did in the ring to concede and bow out. Spock let him go.

Jim rolled over and glared at the agent. He didn't take Spock's offer of assistance in helping him up. In the background, Pavel along with several others, were staring, mouths open. None of them looked like they dared intervene.

Spock said, irritatingly matter-of-fact, "I need to speak with you."

The only flippant non-verbal reply Jim was good at included his middle finger.

Spock didn't seem particularly affected by the vulgar gesture. He did, however, lower his voice. "It is a matter of urgency." Jim would have ignored that except, after a strange scrutinizing stare, Spock added quietly, "I won't take much of your time, _Mr. Davis_."

Jim didn't think twice. He grabbed Spock by the elbow and hauled the infuriating bastard out of earshot of the others. They exited the building via a side ramp beside the open dock. Jim released Spock then, once they were outside, and stalked across the parking lot toward a small picnic area that some workers favored for a smoking break. Gravel crunched under his steel-toed boots.

Two people were already leaning against a table. When they saw Kirk coming, they stubbed out their cigarettes, grabbed their cell phones, and left.

The shunning would have hurt Jim years ago. It didn't touch him now. He went to the farthest table and leaned against it, expression bordering dangerous.

"I am sorry," Spock apologized right off the bat, which slightly surprised his companion.

Jim rubbed at his sore shoulder.

The agent gave him a knowing look. "That, unfortunately, could not be avoided but it is not the regret to which I refer. I understand your mother changed your legal name in order to protect you and thus, by voicing it, I have risked exposing your secret without first consulting you."

Jim crossed his arms as a sign that he didn't feel forgiving and stared.

Spock's stare was equally unrelenting. "Allow me to explain my presence here, Mr. Kirk. I will endeavor to be brief. Also, any question I may ask you will require only a yes or a no. Does this suffice?"

Jim had the gut feeling this guy wasn't going to go away if he indicated no. So he nodded.

The agent drew something from the inside of his coat. It was a headshot of a displeased-looking man. "Have you encountered this individual?"

Jim shook his head.

Spock tucked the picture away again. "Then you must be informed this man will attempt to contact you within the next few days. He is currently under federal investigation, concerning matters which I may not disclose; however, you may assume he is dangerous. His... determination should not be underestimated under any circumstance. Do you understand?"

Jim didn't, not at all. He nodded anyway.

"If he contacts you, Mr. Kirk, I need to be notified immediately." Spock produced a standard white business card, blank except for a phone number. He held it out. "Can I trust that you will do so?"

Jim took the card, on the verge of laughing. He wanted to tell the guy that trust was always a lie. Jim didn't trust Spock. Spock would be the government's stupidest federal agent if he wanted to waste his time trusting Jim.

Jim ran a thumb contemplatively along the black embossed numbers across the card, then flipped it over to its blank side. He retrieved the pen he carried with him out of necessity and wrote, _Why me?_ It was a question that covered a lot of ground. Spock's answer would likely be interesting.

The man was silent for some seconds before he said, "You may provide him with an answer to a mystery he was given to solve."

_What mystery?_ Jim thought, letting the question show clearly on his face.

Spock's expression shuttered to a complete blankness. "The nature of the mystery is irrelevant, Mr. Kirk. If the man in the photograph should appear in your vicinity, you will report it to me." His tone of voice was a command and a dismissal.

Jim didn't move and stared at the agent simply out of spite at being ordered around. Spock was the first one to break their eye contact and walk away. This satisfied Jim immensely. He hopped up onto the edge of the picnic table and watched Spock go. He stayed at the table, swinging his right leg in an absent motion for a while. The people who came outside to take a smoke break but didn't want to sully themselves by being near him were greatly annoyed by his lazing about in their area. One of them would report him to Finnegan, and Finnegan would think it was his duty to concoct another hare-brained scheme to deliver payback.

Jim didn't care. He left the picnic table five minutes before the end of his lunch break, just as a police cruiser was doing a slow drive-by along the main road, and snagged an apple and Caterpillar's keys from Pavel inside the shipping dock. He was on his way back to the freezer having come to the conclusion that whoever was in the headshot wanted to find him because he was a Davis. Spock had found him for that reason, after all, so it stood to reason Mystery Guy thought it was important too.

But Jim wasn't a Davis anymore. He was a fucking Kirk, which had something to do with his unknown father whom his mother had never talked about, not when he was a kid and not when he was certain he was old enough to handle the truth. Then she disappeared one night in his twentieth year and was found dead two days later inside her locked car, taking the secret of his father's identity with her.

A tragedy, the Riverside news had called it. A tragedy and an unsolved mystery.

Jim knew way too much about both of those things. And here was someone bringing him more of the latter.

The tragedy part, he decided, biting hard into his apple, would be all theirs.

* * *

Leonard hated his luck—honest to god _hated_ it.

The town hall records turned up no Winona Davis in Riverside. The phone book was no help either. In case she had married, Leonard had tried searching for her son's name but nothing beginning with a J, not even John, appeared under Davis. If they both had new aliases, or never even moved here like the old man in Esterville had told him, Leonard knew he was stuck on this wild-goose chase for good.

Back at his car, he plucked a yellow parking ticket off his windshield, kicked at a nearly bald tire and clambered inside. He smoked two cigarettes in rapid succession, using the butt of the last one to turn the ticket into ash. Then he sat in silence for half an hour, struggling with his disappointment and darting glances at the glove box where he'd stashed his new burner phone. In the end, he knew he couldn't use it. Calling someone was simply too risky, no matter how much he needed to hear a familiar voice.

The decision cost him another piece of his sanity and three more cigarettes.

He had no idea if Joanna was better or worse or just the same, and no idea what his dad thought about Christine showing up, if she truly had. He couldn't get a report on whether or not Clay was keeping his promise to act like a doctor who gave a damn.

All-in-all, Leonard concluded, this last day of August was closure to a miserable failure of a month, and he wasn't sorry to see it go, with the exception that it meant his little girl had one day less to live. September had better be the month of miracles.

He drove to a motel, booked a room for a week with a credit card that wasn't his, and slept on a musty bed for three hours before he peeled himself off of its sheets and took a shower. The sun was past its zenith when he emerged from his room in a different pair of jeans and t-shirt. Leonard stood a moment in hesitation by his car, only then remembering Spock knew what he was driving.

"Damn," he muttered. It had to go.

He took the car to an auto repair shop on the far side of town, dropping it off with some vague excuse that it made a funny noise (which was true, actually) and giving them a false name and number to call when they figured out what was wrong. Eventually, once the shop-owners realized he wouldn't be back, they would have it impounded; then later either the car would be sold or scrapped for parts.

Leonard caught a bus and rode it back to the downtown area, thinking he could try again to pull off the trick of talking with locals to find out about a woman named Winona. He didn't think it was a common name, so he had some hope that he might succeed.

* * *

There was nothing edible in the house but stale bread and cans of mushy pet food. Annoyed that he had once again forgotten he needed to go grocery-shopping until the moment he was home, Jim exchanged his leather jacket for a grey hoodie, scratched his cat Jinx briefly on the head, and trudged back out to his mother's car (not his, he'd never think of it as his) for a trip he hated to make. Cashiers were always so curious, no matter how often they saw his face.

It took him less than a minute to realize he was being followed. A quick glance in the rearview mirror confirmed the black, unmarked vehicle two cars behind him. It looked like Spock didn't trust him after all.

Jim smirked and changed lanes. What kind of fun could he have with this?

Speeding up, he cut someone off and ran a yellow light. Horns blared. He grinned, liking this sudden, newfound excitement.

After a succession of left and right turns, which surprisingly Spock figured out no matter how randomly Jim made them, Jim ran a red light, narrowly avoiding collision with a Mack truck (he laughed at the near-miss) and swerved off the highway, backing with the ease of someone who had once been a juvenile deliquent into a dark corner of a gas station. Less than a minute later, the black sedan drove by a snail's pace but it kept going.

Jim raised his middle finger in salute. "You're ugly, your dick's small, and everybody's afraid to fuck your mother!"

The speech was garbled, nonsense to his own ears, but he threw his head back and laughed hysterically anyway. It was some minutes before he could calm himself down enough to give the appearance he was in his right mind.

Since the agent was looking for him, Jim backtracked a couple of miles then took an obscure route only locals knew to a supermarket he rarely shopped at. He entered the building with caution but was pleasantly surprised when no one paid him any attention and spent more time than he normally would have pondering the variety of tv dinners in the frozen food section. Then he puttered towards the in-store bakery, because the cakes looked good and his cat liked frosting almost as much as he did. His stomach took that moment to remind him he hadn't eaten more than an apple in over twelve hours. By the time he rolled his cart to the Self Check-Out, he knew he was way over his budget. It didn't seem to matter.

Life was good for Jim Kirk until he unloaded his groceries into the trunk of his mother's car. Then he started to shut the trunk lid and caught sight of a person exiting the bus at the bus stop.

At first, Jim thought he was hallucinating, that the federal agent had wound his brain up with all the subterfuge. But, after ducking down by his car, Jim thought _fuck it_, and stood back up for a second glance.

It was the man in the photograph, no doubt about it. Nobody else Jim had ever seen looked that particular blend of homeless and constipated. Jim watched the guy stand about like an odd duck on the sidewalk as the bus rattled away, slowly surveying his surroundings with a frown. Beyond the mystery of his presence, he looked as ordinarily human as anyone.

Then his head turned in Jim's direction. Jim automatically held his breath in anticipation of being seen but that intense stare skipped right past him. It was such a great disappointment not to be recognized, Jim started forward in anger.

"Why, it's little Jimmy!" a voice crowed before he had taken two steps.

An old woman, clinging to the arm of an older man, tottered directly into his path.

Jim recognized her almost instantly, and his stomach sank. He went back to holding his breath.

"Oh, how are you?" she asked him, only immediately to correct herself. "My my, I'm sorry, dear. I know you can't answer that. Poor thing. Still seems just like yesterday your mama came into our Petey's store, dragging you by the ear 'cause you'd—"

Mrs. Addison's husband shushed his wife quickly like he was afraid talking about Winona Kirk might cause Jim to burst into tears in the middle of a busy parking lot.

Jim gave the couple a tight-lipped smile.

The woman, someone he remembered that his mother had genuinely liked, reached out to clutch sympathetically at his arm. Jim moved away so she couldn't touch him, and his message was received loud and clear. Mr. Addison shook his white-haired head slowly but said nothing, mouth pressed thin, and urged his wife to move along to the supermarket entrance.

She bid Jim goodbye, maybe adding that she hoped he was doing all right, but Jim couldn't seem to hear all her words. It was the pity in her eyes that held him fast. It had more power to hurt than cruelty or indifference. When he couldn't stand that pity any longer, he slammed the trunk lid closed with unnecessary force and leapt into the car. He had to get away. People were staring again, all of them, remembering who he was.

* * *

Fingering the small change in his pocket, Leonard thought long and hard about going into the grocery store and buying a ready-made sandwich. Just as he had come to a decision, a ugly tan Bonneville almost flattened him in its wild flight across the parking lot. He threw a small rock after it and cursed the driver. The rock plinked off the license plate.

Fucking morons! They were in every town.

As he entered the market, Leonard inspected the hand with which he'd caught himself on the pavement and grimaced at the scraped skin and blood. Food would have to wait a little longer. He spied the sign that read Restrooms and set out towards it, already making plans to filch a bottle of disinfectant off the shelf on the way. Time and experience had taught him that it was always smart to cleanse an open wound before healing it, because sealing skin wasn't the same as preventing infection.

Leonard sighed to himself, weary all of a sudden and feeling like he'd only just met the beginning of his trouble in Riverside.

What would be next?

He realized he wasn't looking forward to finding out.


End file.
